


Whenever You Breathe Out, I Breathe In (Positive Negative)

by everythingintransit



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Domestic, Dumbledore Bashing, Fix-It, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Past Character Death, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sirius Black Lives, all sirius black knows is wake up - dance - pine - cause chaos - eat hot chip & lie, wolfstar
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-16
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:00:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 59,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26499025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/everythingintransit/pseuds/everythingintransit
Summary: Sirius returns from Azkaban and is cleared of charges after his trial. Remus forgives him for everything.(In which Sirius is a free man, Remus is still in love with him, Harry gets a better life, and many people’s lives are saved.)[Previously titled Home Is]
Relationships: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 59
Kudos: 171





	1. Good Times Bad Times

**Author's Note:**

> heyo! there's a lot of marauders' era references in this fic (probably because i am also writing a long haul marauders' era fic which you can read [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23756803/chapters/57059248) if you'd like) and so most of those anecdotes and stories are taken from that fic. you don't have to read it to know what's going on, but jsyk
> 
> also this might get a bit sad (as all of my fics eventually do) but never fear, i will come bearing content warnings for each chapter. sit back and enjoy the ride

_Sirius Black_

_12 Grimmauld Place_

_Islington, London_

_June 25th, 1994_

_Remus Lupin_

_Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry_

_Dear Moony,_

_Where have you been? Trial will be over in a week’s time, as I’m told, and I’m itching to get out of here, here being the dreary and unbearably dull Kingdom that I have been unlucky enough to call home. Still up for a trip to America? I think I fancy somewhere tropical, actually, but I’m open to discussion. I do want to head west, though. North/South America, take your pick._

_I miss you. The offer still stands, you know, if you’d like to move in. It doesn’t feel like home here. I’m thinking about getting a new place, leaving this for Harry, maybe, if he’d like it, but I can’t stand it. Being locked up for the second time gets old. Did I mention that I miss you?_

_I’m sorry about the way things turned out at school for you. Snape should be exterminated, somehow, once and for all. Nasty blighter always finds a way to bite back. Like a mosquito, or a tick, perhaps. Maybe some bug spray will do the trick. Do you have any jobs lined up? If not (and if so!) please come visit. Or move in. Moving in means moving out, mind you, as I’m leaving Grimmauld for good once trial’s over and I’m free. I’m offering!_

_If I don’t hear from you in a week, I’m back to tracking. I will sniff every blade of grass in the Scottish highlands until I find you. And then I will go to Wales, and do the same thing. You can’t avoid me forever. Please write!_

_Yours always,_

_Padfoot_

It had been three days since Remus had gotten the letter and he’s still not written back, mostly because he’s overwhelmed at the thought of living with Sirius somewhere other than Grimmauld Place, because the last time they lived together, it had been the best and worst times of Remus’s life, times he’s keen to forget just as well as Sirius would like to remember them.

They’d lived in Cardiff, in a tiny flat with big windows. Apparated to London and the Potters’ house in Devonshire for work, and all around the U.K. for assorted missions set by Alastor Moody, Fleamont Potter, Arthur Weasley, and occasionally Dumbledore himself. 

War times. The worst of times. 

Sirius had started drinking heavily by the end of it. He’d stay sober (or something like it) for missions, and would have a bottle in his hand as soon as he’d returned home. Remus remembers leaving for the last time, for the flat had been Sirius’s (Remus would have had to live with his dad up in Northern Wales if not for Sirius’s money) and Remus hadn’t been able to stand it anymore.

That’s the last he’d seen of Sirius. 

The breakup.

Sirius had been drunk and disconsolate, wandering around the flat sobbing, begging Remus to stay, pleading that he couldn’t live without him, telling him he’d die without him there, that he’d kill himself, that it would be the end of everything, that they couldn’t be apart. 

Remus had left anyways.

It had been weeks later that James and Lily died. Sirius had gone to Azkaban, taking Peter down with him. And Remus had been left alone. 

It’s a strange, long, unfair life to have lived. Remus is thirty four years old and feels like he’s lived through generations of desperate, aching loss and bouts of suicidal depression that he’s impressed haven’t led to him taking his own life yet. He’d hung on, somehow, and he’s still here. Sirius is back, Harry is ( _was_ , Remus has to remind himself) Remus’s student, and life is getting those bright, starry splotches that mean good things are happening.

Remus is always wary when good things are happening.

He’s been packing up his classroom and had reread Sirius’s letter; it had been sitting on his desk ever since it had been delivered by a raven that flew right to his window, as though it knew he hadn’t been eating any meals in the Great Hall because of the way every student stares up at him knowing exactly what he is. 

It had been Remus’s greatest fear throughout his days as a student. Being found out about. His friends had known: James, Sirius, and Peter, of course, and a few others. Lily, Marlene McKinnon, and eventually Mary MacDonald. Mary had been the only other one standing, once the war was over. She’d left the country decades before Sirius got the idea in his head, back to Trinidad, where her family is from, and Remus hears from her a few times a year.

Certain events, you know. January and February justify a letter because Lily and Marlene’s birthdays were in the winter. March, Remus’s birthday. September, something reminiscing about Hogwarts, something nostalgic. Early October, as though in preparation, because Halloween never gets easier, and then a letter on Halloween itself. Always includes “I’m sorry” as though it’s any of their faults. Then Christmas. Six letters a year is what’s left of their friendship.

Remus puts Sirius’s letter away and knows that he’ll visit him. He hasn’t got a house or anywhere to live. His dad’s there, of course, but Remus would rather do a great deal of things before moving back in with his father. Remus picks up the other piece of parchment on his desk, this one being the Marauder’s Map, a treasure created by four impulsive boys with too much time on their hands over the course of six years.

Remus taps it, utters the age old “I solemnly swear that I am up to no good,” and watches as the map unfurls, reads his own, old nickname of “Moony” scrawled across the top, and peers down at the map. As it happens, Harry seems to be walking in his direction. Right towards his office…

A knock at the door signifies his arrival, and Remus glances up, smiling upon seeing Harry in the open doorway, glancing around the classroom. He does, really, look just like his father. Harry’s brown skin is a little lighter than James’s, but not by much. They have the same thick black hair that’s always stuck up at odd angles, the same crooked noses (it seems that both of them had broken them as well), bad eyesight, toothy grins.

Currently, Harry is not smiling at all.

“I’ve just seen Hagrid,” Harry begins, not bothering for hi’s and hello’s, “And he said you’ve resigned. Have you? Why would you? You’re the best professor we’ve ever had!” Remus already feels exhausted with the way this conversation is headed.

“I’m afraid it is true, Harry. Professor Snape… accidentally let it slip that I’m, you know, a werewolf. Everyone knows now.”

“Well, you can’t just _leave_ because of it! It doesn’t matter to _me_ ,” Harry points at his chest in reference to himself, “Or any of my mates, either! Ron, Hermoine, Seamus, Neville, even _Malfoy_ likes you!” Remus wonders why Draco Malfoy has anything to do with this. He keeps a wry smile on his face.

“I’m sad to say that it’s not your opinions of me that really matter. I’ve already had plenty of owls from angry parents. They don’t want someone like me teaching their children. And after what happened, I see their point. I was dangerous-”

“It wasn’t your _fault!”_

“-And that can never happen again.” Remus opens a desk drawer to empty it out, and folds Sirius’s letter amongst a few books as he continues packing. “Harry, from what Dumbledore has told me, you saved a lot of lives that night. If I’m proud of anything you’ve done this year, it’s of how much you’ve learned. Tell me about your patronus.”

Harry starts in surprise. “How d’you know about that?”

“What else could have driven the dementors away?” Harry finally pauses, looking thoughtful.

“It was a stag,” he finally says, causing Remus’s heart to lurch. “My patronus. I didn’t think it would be corporeal, but it was _huge,_ and it ran around the lake, it was amazing…” Harry pauses. “I thought it was my dad, at first.”

“Your dad’s animagus was a stag. His patronus, too.” Remus remembers Defense Against the Dark Arts class, sixth year, James laughing out loud with joy as he was one of the first to cast his patronus: a silver stag bounding around the classroom, fueled by the excitement of other students. 

Remus had only cast his patronus in private and missed out on the extra points given by their professor for corporeal patronuses. He’d been ashamed of the shape it had taken: a wolf. James and Sirius had only seen it during the war, during those few times when Remus had been forced to cast it, drawing on the few happy memories untainted by the depression of his everyday life.

He’d thought of Sirius. Sirius grinning, laughing, dancing, kissing him in the Gryffindor dormitory, fifth year, holding his hand as they walked through the fields in Wales, hugging him after being away. Sirius meant happiness to Remus, back then.

Remus throws a few final books, including Sirius’s letter, into his trunk, and turns to Harry, feeling rather matter-of-fact all of a sudden. 

“Here, I felt like I should return this to you.” He hands James’s Invisibility Cloak back to Harry, who takes it appreciatively. “And…” He hesitates, picking up the Marauder’s Map, and seeing Harry’s young face glow with excitement. “Since I am no longer your professor, I feel no guilt about giving this back to you. It’s got no purpose to me, and I’m sure you’ll be able to put it to good use.” Harry grins as he takes the map back.

It’s not long at all before Dumbledore appears in the doorway, his blue eyes glinting as he regards Remus and Harry with an unreadable expression. Remus turns back to Harry and smiles at him. He’d very much enjoyed teaching the boy. 

Remus wanted to see Harry throughout the boy’s childhood. He’d wanted to _raise_ Harry, after James and Lily died. It had been the moment where Remus had lost his almost devotional worship for Dumbledore. Twenty one years old, a penniless werewolf who had lost all of his friends and the love of his life in one night, Remus had been hysterical, screaming and shouting, begging Dumbledore to leave Harry with him.

“Remus, you aren’t family.”

“I’m- I’m not _family?!_ ” Remus had been tearing at his hair, sobbing and hyperventilating, shouting without regard for how loud he was being. “Petunia’s never even _met_ Harry! I _know_ him! I was there when he was born! He knows _me,_ he knows my name, he recognizes me, he lets me feed him, he stops crying when I pick him up, Albus, Albus, you can’t take him there, you can’t, please, Albus, please…”

Remus thinks that if he had been calmer that night, maybe things would have worked out differently. 

“Well, goodbye Harry, it’s been a real pleasure to teach you. I’m sure we’ll meet again sometime.” Harry smiles shyly back at him. Dumbledore wishes him a solemn goodbye, and Remus shifts the heavy Grindylow tank in his arm to shake the headmaster’s hand, meeting his piercing blue eyes for what he hopes will be the last time in a long time. 

**-**

Remus has never been to 12 Grimmauld Place.

Sirius’s horror stories had been enough to keep him away. Sirius had done nothing but suffer in that house, and Remus feels awful that he’s been forced to take up residence in a place full of shattered, dark and awful childhood memories. It’s like Remus being forced to live in the Shrieking Shack. It’s nearly as bad as Azkaban. 

There might even be more pain associated with Grimmauld for Sirius. Remus doesn’t know much, but he knows that his friend had been subjected to two out of three Unforgivable Curses by his parents. Sirius never had any physical scars to show for it, and had therefore never talked about the abuse. Not until after he’d ran away, and been disowned, and spilled it all to Remus one night.

It had been during a sensitive, sad period in their relationship. Remus’s mum had died that year, Sirius had run away from home: they felt very much stranded in their own private suffering and had found incredible comfort in one another. 

When Remus arrives in Islington, hot and out of breath, his bad leg aching so much that he’s been limping all through London, weighed down by his trunks and bags, he’s invariably frustrated to find that, of course, it seems that 12 Grimmauld doesn’t even exist. 

Remus looks at 11, then at 13, then up at the sky to pray for patience. What had Sirius been thinking? He looks back at the tall, narrow brick houses, and at the crack in between them where 12 _should_ be. How is it just not there? Had Sirius given him the wrong address? Where is it? 

All of a sudden, by some sort of incredible magic, another house forces its way through the crack between 11 and 13. The bricks squeeze to a reasonable size, and the house drags itself onto the street. Remus checks the house number. 12. Of course.

Then the door opens, and Remus sees Sirius leaning in the doorway, long hair dark and thick around his shoulders, a face full of dark stubble, and eyes blue and bright with electricity.

“Hello,” Sirius offers, “Do I know you?” 

“I feel like we’ve met.”

“Is that so?”

“Wouldn’t forget that face, Snuffles.” Sirius goes an appealing shade of pink. He’s always hated the nickname.

“Get in here, tosser.” 

Sirius gives him a huge hug, something much more personal than the one they had shared in the Shrieking Shack, and Remus hugs him back, laughing a bit as Sirius rocks him back and forth. The other man is still Azkaban-thin, though not emaciated anymore, and Remus is glad enough for that. 

“Alright, stranger, it seems as though you’ve brought all your worldly possessions, so I assume you’re taking me up on the offer? Trial’s over, I’m free.” Sirius has pulled back from the hug, though he keeps his arms on Remus’s, and his eyes sparkle with unrestrained happiness.

“I’m _free,_ Moony! I’m going out to celebrate tonight, and you’re _also_ invited. I want to go to a nice restaurant, have something sparkly to drink, and then I’m going to dance. You also have to dance. I haven’t forgotten how well you dance, Moons. Then, tomorrow, I’d like to go to Kew Gardens just for a little run around, and then we can bang about to wherever you’d like to buy a house. How does that sound?”

To Remus, it sounds pretty alright.

They go to a fancy restaurant, and Sirius knocks back a few funny colored drinks that may or may not sparkle, and they do dance. Remus, for his part, _has_ always been a good dancer, he’s just a bit out of his depth as twelve years with no one to dance with can put a mighty strain on the soul. Then, nighttime, staggering home tipsy, and Remus is reminded overwhelmingly of 1979, of life BA, Before Azkaban. 

Sirius and Remus stand arm in arm in front of where 12 Grimmauld should be. 11 and 13 look very cozy, side by side.

“What’s up?” Remus finally asks.

“You need to… to _think_ about it, very very hard, you know, and imagine it’s there,” Sirius slurs. “And I’m… I don’t _like_ thinking about it. Can you?”

“What?”

“Just imagine it’s there, Moony man.” Sirius has been calling him this all night. Remus remembers when James would call it, too. Always when they were drunk. Nicknames lost through time. So Remus imagines Grimmauld into reality, and they wobble up the stairs and back into the house. 

“‘M hungry,” Sirius mumbles. Remus had noticed that the kitchen was very well stocked, something Sirius had always been adamant about when they shared a flat, and Remus chalks it up to Sirius not being fed as a punishment when he was younger, and essentially starved when he lived in the house as a teenager. 

The lack of food in his upbringing had led him to be a rather unfortunate chef, however, and he’s limited to the basics of cooking: assorted types of eggs, pasta, and mincemeat, because you can tell when it’s fully cooked. They’d gotten food poisoning a few times from Sirius’s attempts at chicken. Remus was the one with cooking talent in their relationship, and was the one always without appetite; weak and nauseous around full moons. 

Sirius makes them toast and butters it while pulling up a notepad, writing in his scrawled handwriting: PLACES FOR MOONY & PADS TO VISIT

  1. California



“I do want somewhere tropical, though.” Sirius says, looking down at the word in front of him with a frown. “Maybe we can do America some other time.”

“Florida’s kind of tropical.”

“True.”

2\. Florida

Sirius looks down at the list, and then adds:

3\. Costa Rica

Remus nods. Then, a stroke of genius hits him. 

“What about Trinidad?” 

“That’ssorta specific,” Sirius slurs while scrawling down 4. Trinidad onto the list. “Why not Tobago?”

“Mary’s from Trinidad. She lives there, now.”

“...Mary?” Sirius’s eyes are clouded and hazy with confusion. Is he just drunk, or does he genuinely not remember Mary? She was one of his best friends at Hogwarts...

“Mary MacDonald,” Remus prompts him gently. “Artsy Mary, Cursebreaker Mary…”

“Right.” Sirius looks very unsure.

“She pierced your ears, helped you stretch them…” Sirius raises a hand to his earlobe, both of which are permanently stretched out and dangling limply. 

In their sixth year, 1977, when the punk scene had finally exploded from underground to all over in the U.K., Sirius had taken on some trends that had less to do with music and more to do with fashion. Mary had Engorgio-ed some small black earrings for Sirius, making them a little bigger once a month so by the time they started seventh year, Sirius proudly bore two big round discs in each earlobe. 

Everyone but Mary and Remus had found it disgusting. Mary thought it cool, Remus thought it hot. 

“Do you have… have we got pictures?”

“Yes!” Remus is overenthusiastic about this, mostly because he’s uncomfortable with the fact that Sirius seems to have lost some memories: good, fair, happy memories that shouldn’t have been wiped away by trauma. What had really happened to him in Azkaban?

Remus keeps his entire life packed into a few trunks and suitcases, so it takes only a bit of hunting around to find his old photo albums. They haven’t been added to in years. Great plumes of dust puff up from the books as he drops them onto the long dining table, and Sirius nervously munches at his toast while Remus sits back down next to him. 

For a few minutes, they just stare at the albums.

“Are you ready?” Remus asks gently.

“Yeah…” Remus opens an album. There’s many, many photos, most taken by Peter or Lily. Peter’s move while Lily’s stay frozen. Remus flicks through page after page of memories: James during a Quidditch match, Sirius, Remus, and Peter sitting in the greenhouses, Remus and Marlene dancing… Remus moves faster through their days at Hogwarts and finally reaches the end of seventh year.

He finds the one he’d been thinking of, one of Mary and Sirius together.

It’s a good photo, so Remus knows Lily had taken it. Sirius and Mary are sat side by side on the steps leading up to his and Remus’s flat in Cardiff. They’re sitting in the dingy stairwell, but afternoon light turns both of them gold. The air is hazy, probably with Remus’s unpictured cigarette smoke. It had been the summer after they graduated, before everything went really bad, when they were still young and dumb.

Sirius is caught mid laugh. It’s a photo from Lily’s camera, meaning muggle film, trapping them in time, but Remus can still imagine Sirius bending forwards as he laughs, leaning into Mary’s side, then glancing up at her, making eye contact. He’s wearing a leather jacket spiked with safety pins and assorted studs, a The Who shirt, dark blue jeans all torn up, and his big heavy Dr. Martens that Mary had painted the Union Jack onto.

Mary looks as gorgeous as she ever does. Her black skin is a contrast to Sirius’s pale face. She wears a red bandana tied around the front of her afro, and swinging earrings made from Butterbeer caps. Her outfit is simple: red dress with thin straps, dirty white trainers. 

“Oh…” Sirius runs his finger over the photo, tracing Mary’s face. “Of course. Mary. Of _course._ I haven’t forgotten her, Moony, I swear, I… I remember. We got drunk, that night, do you remember? We had a housewarming party, with everyone there.” He smiles at the memory. “ _Everyone._ Even Benjy and Caradoc came, _Merlin,_ that was fun. Oh, and _Christ,_ you and Caradoc took acid-! Haha, Moony, you two were crazy.” 

Remus nods, heart aching at the memory. 

“Caradoc, did he… did he die? I don’t…” Sirius doesn’t have to say ‘remember’. Remus understands. 

Remus, however, remembers that Sirius had been on Caradoc’s final mission. Sirius, James, and Lily. They’d Apparated back into Sirius and Remus’s flat: James slashed to pieces by a spell, bleeding all over the rug, Lily screaming, Sirius backing away from the scene in plain shock. None of them had ever seen Caradoc again. He’d been lost in the anarchy.

Remus remembers Sirius telling him that there’d been smoke everywhere, dark haze, everything blurred and confusing, sharp jets of spellbound light slashing through the smoke. Caradoc’s face, pale, shouting, there and then so suddenly, not.

“He’d gone missing, Pads. We never found his body.” 

“Right.” Sirius pauses. “And Benjy?”

“Died.” 

“Right.” Sirius nods, clearer on this. “Blew up, right?” Remus just nods. “I remember Marlene and Dorcas. And the Prewetts. Remus, we didn’t do enough to remember them, did we? How could I forget? Where- where are their graves? I think we should go. Before we leave. For Trinidad. We should visit.”

**-**

They go to Caradoc and Benjy’s first. They’re buried in Swansea, Caradoc’s hometown.

Caradoc had been a hippie, Benjy a punk. Both of them a year older than the Marauders.

Caradoc had been training to be a Healer, and he’d first worked on healing his own mind through the use of psychedelic drugs and rock. He and Remus had bonded over their love for Jimi Hendrix, Funkadelic, Gong, and the Grateful Dead. Remus had been somewhat of a stoner in his youth, and the pair of them had spent long days rolling spliffs and smoking them in a blissed out fantasy of ten minute guitar solos.

Benjy had been Sirius’s dream. Remus had often wondered if Sirius wanted to be Benjy, or be with him. The Korean boy had shoved multiple safety pins through each earlobe, pierced his nose, shaved both sides of his head to leave a mohawk in the middle, and then dyed it. His pureblood family had kicked him out for being queer. The Fenwicks hadn’t wanted to bury his body, so Caradoc’s family had buried him as well. They had been best friends.

Benjy had killed himself with a homemade bomb blast trap that had been detonated too early. It had been meant to take out twelve Death Eaters, and it had, but he’d taken himself down with them. Remus knows why he’d done it, because he hadn’t wanted to die at their hands. Benjy would have always wanted it done on his own terms. 

The inscription on Caradoc’s gravestone is a Grateful Dead quote: “Hang it up and see what tomorrow brings.” Benjy’s: “Don’t let them take you alive.”

“That’s Sid Vicious, that is. Benjy’s quote.” Sirius mumbles as he lays down flowers over Benjy’s grave. “Christ, I miss him.”

“Sid?” Sirius laughs, but it’s a hollow sound.

“Sid, Benjy, all of them.”

Marlene is buried with the rest of her family in Carlisle. The McKinnons had all died together: attacked at home. Remus visits her grave sometimes, because she’d been his best friend, first love, and her death had sent shockwaves through him that he’s never properly gotten over. He tears up, standing at her grave, and Sirius gently takes his hand. Dorcas, Marlene’s girlfriend and fiancee, is buried outside London. 

Then the Prewett twins, buried in Devon. Molly Weasley’s younger brothers. It had taken five Death Eaters to kill Fabian and Gideon. Godric’s Hollow is last. Remus had never visited James and Lily’s grave. He wouldn’t have trusted himself to do it alone.

Sirius holds Remus’s hand very tightly as they walk down the street where the Potters’ house stands. Remus doesn’t know the specific events that had taken place that night. All he knows is that Sirius had been there, briefly, and left Harry with Hagrid in an ultimately selfish decision to go chase down Peter.

A self seeking decision that had changed lives forever. 

Remus thinks he’s forgiven Sirius, now. 

There’s a glamour over the house. It’s invisible, at first, but when they move closer, the ruined cottage appears. The roof has fallen in. In fact, the whole right side of the house seems to have collapsed. Remus is holding his breath. 

This, the Potter cottage, had always been a place of great joy. Remus knows this especially for Sirius, who had spent weeks in the summers living there until he had finally run away, and been given a home in the cottage for good; James’s parents, Fleamont and Euphemia, had been incredibly kind and generous people, and died shortly before their only son did, of Dragon Pox. 

“There’s a sign,” Remus mumbles, taking a few steps forward while Sirius follows shakily, as though tethered to him by his hand. The sign is wooden, with golden letters, and it’s the single saddest thing Remus has ever read.

_On this spot, on the night of 31 October 1981, Lily and James Potter lost their lives. Their son, Harry, remains the only wizard ever to have survived the Killing Curse. This house, invisible to muggles, has been left in its ruined state as a monument to the Potters and a reminder of the violence that tore apart their family._

Sirius is sobbing. 

In his youth, Sirius had hardly ever cried, but the alcoholism had made him more prone to weeping fits; sometimes Remus would arrive home from missions or simply spending time away from him to find Sirius curled up on the bed, the sofa, the floor, crying as though the entire world has ended, and maybe it had been repressed traumas coming back to haunt him or maybe he had just given up. The way the rest of them had.

He pulls Remus away from the house, and the sign, wiping his eyes as bursts of tears continue to wrack his frail body. 

“I want to go,” he sobs, “I can’t be here.”

“Okay.” But Remus doesn’t know how to leave. Sirius is standing in the street with his hair wild from running his hands through it, and his face red, eyes tearstained and watery, and he cries and cries. “I’ll Side-Along, okay?” Remus doesn’t want Sirius to get splinched. The other man sort of nods, Remus can’t tell, but he’s made a decision. Places his arm tight on Sirius’s, feels his friend grab onto him, and then they whirl away into a closed blackness. 


	2. Promise I'll Take Care

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks to everyone who left a comment on the 1st chapter, i live for any feedback and hearing what y'all have to say really makes my day <3

_ THIS PURCHASE AND SALE AGREEMENT dated 5th July, 1994, is made between Jennifer Campbell, of Cornwall Estate Agents, and Sirius Black, on the following terms: _

_ 1\. PROPERTY: Buyer will buy and seller will the following land with all improvements, fixtures, and landscaping on or relating to the land: _

_ Street Address: 24 Sunny Corner Lane _

_ City: Penzance  _

_ County: Cornwall _

Remus is rereading their proof of sale agreement one last time because it all feels so surreal, and as though it happened very fast, which, of course, is generally characteristic of doing anything with Sirius Black. He has a tendency to jump into things, or  _ leap  _ into them, to be honest, and buying a small cottage by Sennen Cove, almost the westernmost point in the whole country, had been an action most characteristic of Sirius.

They’re in the cottage now,  _ their  _ cottage as Sirius calls it, and Remus is sitting in the kitchen, reading the proof of sale, waiting for Sirius. They have an international Portkey set up to take them to Port of Spain, and it’s set to leave at half past one. It’s now ten past one, and Sirius is still either packing, admiring himself in the mirror, or deeply engrossed in a motorbike magazine.

Remus peers into the bathroom to find that Sirius had opted for the second option: he’s standing in nothing but a pair of swim trunks, trying to shove a wide black plug through his earlobe. One has already been put in, Remus can see, though it’s smaller than it had been before. 

“Pads, what are you doing? We’ve twenty minutes until the Portkey leaves.” 

“I’m just trying to get this in…” Sirius’s hands slip around the plug, he groans, grits his teeth, and then successfully slides it into his ear. Beaming at Remus in the mirror, he turns around and raises both hands to his ears. He looks like a teenager again, sort of, just with more lines on his face and more tattoos than he’d had in the past.

“Great,” Remus tells him unenthusiastically, “is that all you’re wearing?”

“What, this?” Sirius gestures to his shirtless body. “I want to hit the beach as soon as we arrive!  _ You’re  _ wearing a jumper! No offense, Moony, but it’s rather unbecoming and also out of fashion. We’re going to  _ Trinidad.  _ People don’t wear jumpers in Trinidad.” 

“We’re going to miss the Portkey if we don’t leave now.”

“Portkey, schmortkey, I’m a very fast walker. And runner. We’ll be fine.”

“I’m not.” Sirius finally stops: moving, talking, waving his arms about as he speaks. Remus raises his eyebrows in his own attempt at being defensive, and Sirius frowns. Remus is sure that Sirius had noticed his limp, pronounced more than ever before thanks to thirteen years of lonely, increasingly painful transformations, but he hasn’t mentioned it. They haven’t discussed it at all until now. 

“Right, Moony, I’m sorry. We can go now, well, as soon as I finish packing…” They reach the Portkey with a minute to spare. The day is bright but not too warm, with salty sea breezes making Remus grateful for his jumper and trousers. At his request, Sirius had put on a t-shirt over the swim trunks, but is wearing sandals and looking very much prepared for the beach.

The Portkey is a frisbee.

“Oho!” Sirius exclaims, pointing at the discarded and dirty disc of plastic. “What’s this?”

“Frisbee.”

“ _ Frisbee,  _ what a fun word! What’s it for?”

“You throw it.” Remus gestures in the general motion of frisbee-throwing. “For fun.” 

“Muggles are like animals,” Sirius begins, “they are so easily entertained. You throw a disc for them and they chase it, just like dogs!”

“You sound like a Death Eater,” Remus chastises, “and besides, it’s not a game of fetch. You throw it back and forth to each other. Want to see?” Remus bends down to pick up the frisbee, sees Sirius’s eyes widen in realization, and the man is by his side, hand on the frisbee, laughing out loud as they whirl away across the ocean.

**-**

“Oh, palm trees, loves of my life! Take a picture, Moony?” Sirius poses in front of a palm tree, hands on his hips, grinning flashily as Remus sighs and snaps a photo on his disposable camera. Once arriving in Trinidad, Sirius had torn his shirt off to bare his very pale, very tattooed chest for all of the country to see. It’s hot, though, so his stripping is somewhat reasonable and Remus had indeed been forced to take off his scratchy jumper so his pale, very scarred arms are exposed to the biting sun.

“We need sunblock, and we need to get to Mary’s, because she’ll be angry we’re  _ late- _ ”

“We’re not  _ late, _ ” Sirius scoffs, cutting him off. “I’ve never been late. I distinctly remember  _ you  _ always being late.” Remus stammers as he tries to formulate a response, because Sirius is right and gets very maniacal in these rare instances.

“That  _ changed  _ as we got older.” Sirius glances at him with raised eyebrows,  _ expectant  _ eyebrows, swinging his duffel bag over his arm. “We were both late.” 

“Piss off, Moony, I’ve never been late.” Sirius restates this as though he’d forgotten about the good twelve months where he’d not been late so much as he didn’t show up for meetings, or appointments, or anything except going on missions in brief periods of sobriety, and showing up plastered at the Potters’ house in the middle of the night.

Both Lily and James had privately asked Remus if there were anything he could do to tether Sirius to Wales during the nighttime hours, but Remus had been very much incapable of stopping his boyfriend. 

“He’s waking up  _ Harry, _ ” James had explained, looking very exhausted and a bit embarrassed to be complaining to Remus about this, “And normally, you know, it would be fine to have him around but Harry’s very fussy, and he takes  _ ages _ to fall asleep, and then Sirius shows up, all drunk and loud and wanting to pinch his cheeks…” 

“He’s waking  _ me  _ up!” Lily had been a little more straight to the point about it. “And he’s an  _ adult,  _ as much as he tries to forget it, and he can’t just barge in whenever he so pleases! Harry cannot have his cheeks pinched at all hours! He needs sleep, but more importantly,  _ I  _ need sleep, and if I try to shout at Sirius, he’ll just start crying…”

Sirius, the modern day version, is currently walking (though prancing might be a better word) down Mary’s street and singing a Guns N’ Roses song that he is presently obsessed with. And, as it happens, they are not yet late. 

“Take me down to the paradise city where the grass is green and the girls are pretty, take- me- home!” Sirius sings, skipping down the street, duffel bag thumping against his chest as he dances. He whirls around, long hair unsticking from the strap of his bag, and he is grinning, shaking his arse, and still belting out Paradise City. 

“You’ve been back for- how long?- and the best music you can get into is Guns N’ Roses?”

“Piss off Moony!” Sirius seems to be making very liberal use of this phrase. “What do you listen to, these days, anything modern?” Sirius is once again correct. “You used to be so  _ hip!  _ I remember when the Ramones record came out and you went  _ mental,  _ you were raving about how punk had finally broken through in the U.K. and it was  _ finally  _ happening. And what now? Who’s your favorite band?”

“There’s nothing  _ wrong  _ with enjoying music from my youth-”

“Shh, come on, who’s your favorite band? Don’t be shy about it, now!”

“Sirius-”

“I’ll name ‘em! Top five, tell me if I’m wrong. One- Zeppelin, two- Stones, three- Kinks, four- Velvet Underground, and five?” Remus is getting redder and redder because Sirius is unbearably  _ right,  _ and then, he says: “Gary Glitter!”

“Fuck  _ off,  _ Padfoot-”

“You two really haven’t changed much, have you?” It seems that they’ve ended up in front of Mary’s house, Sirius halfway up the front walk, and Mary is standing in the doorway, looking back and forth between them with a smile on her face, something bittersweet in her eyes because it’s been twelve years and they’re still fighting about music as though they’re still twenty and bright eyed.

“Mary!” Sirius’s voice has reached shrieking-levels and he wraps himself around the woman in the doorway who looks the same as ever, just with cornrows tied up in a twist atop her head instead of a natural afro, and glasses. She looks adult, but still youthful, and much healthier than Remus. They’d both survived, but Mary had made a life for herself while Remus had wished in vain that his would end. 

Mary’s house is painted yellow and has a short red wall separating it from the street. The front yard is small but lush with tropical plant life. Palm trees in the backyard, of course. The house is quite modest but Mary doesn’t apologize, as Remus would have, for Mary has always been completely unapologetic about everything in her life, except the true regretful mistakes, which is probably why her and Sirius get along so well.

Mary has two daughters, one of them seven and one of them five, and both are very cute and sit chattering at the table where everyone has sat until Mary tells them to shoo because the adults have to talk. She makes them very strong coffee which Remus is forced to drink out of politeness, because coffee usually makes him both ill and insane at the same time, not the best combination for him. 

Mary’s husband is named Isaiah and is just as magical as her. He works in a department handling Muggle Artefacts, and Mary works as a Cursebreaker for the Magical Parliament of Trinidad and Tobago. Her daughters Marlene and Danielle have already been showing signs of magic.

“Are you going to send them to a wizarding school?” Remus asks. “Ilvermorny? Or Castelobruxo?”

“Or Hogwarts.” Sirius puts in offhandedly. Mary just shrugs. 

“Hogwarts would be nice, wouldn’t it? We’re in Trinidad, though, so I doubt they’d get letters.”

“Have they been to the U.K.?” Remus asks. Mary shakes her head.

“I myself haven’t been back.” 

“I’m sure if you wanted them to go, a letter to Dumbledore would do. He owes us.” Sirius sounds very entitled about this, but Sirius is correct. Any members from the Order of the Phoenix calling in with a favor would most definitely get what they wanted from Dumbledore. After all, Dumbledore had given Remus a job at the school. 

“He’s a manipulative bastard, though, that man,” Mary speaks up, looking between Sirius and Remus, “I mean, look at the pair of you. Indebted to him for life.”

“What?” Sirius snaps.

“Look! He gave Remus a job, so now you’re grateful to him forever, and he provided evidence for your trial, Sirius! So now you feel like  _ you _ owe  _ him _ . I don’t know if I want to owe him any favors.” 

“I’m not  _ indebted- _ ”

“There’s four years until Marlene’s eleven, anyways, right?” Remus interrupts. “Four years is a long time to think it over.” They all agree. The fight does not continue. 

Mary had found them a rather ramshackle looking bungalow near the beach, which Sirius had deemed perfect for the way she described it over the phone, and looking at it now, Remus wonders why they couldn’t have stayed in a nice hotel. It’s probably because life, for Sirius, is one of these neverending adventures and by adventure Remus means an unfortunate event, because Sirius would never stay in a hotel, or motel, or anything of the sort when he could stay in a hut right on the water.

Mary tells them that she’ll see them later to get drinks and catch up, and then abandons Remus with Sirius in a sand covered, spider infested shack. 

“This is a dream come true!” Sirius throws open all the windows, letting light into the one room wooden hut. “This is so quaint!” Quaint is a very strong word for it. There are two beds, a small wood-burning stove that looks decidedly unsafe, a dresser, and spiders everywhere. Remus is instantly on edge, firstly because Sirius had always been unsatisfied with life unless there was something on fire, and secondly because the beds are so very small and thin, and he knows that Sirius is going to request they be pushed together. 

At Grimmauld, Sirius had slept on the sofa while Remus had transfigured a cushion into something resembling a mattress, and they had been apart, because Remus is not yet ready to share a bed with him. At their cottage in Cornwall, Remus had slept in the guest room and Sirius in the master. Now, he knows, they will individually suffer and fall out of the beds that are less than twin sized. 

“Can we go swimming, Moony?” Sirius has dumped his duffel bag on one of the beds and now is using magic, of course, conjuring a full length mirror and flexing his nonexistent muscles at himself. 

“I’m not swimming. You can go.” Remus stands behind Sirius, peering at himself in the mirror very warily. 

“Oh, like what, Mr. Moony man is insecure?” Sirius turns around and pokes him. “Don’t make me laugh. Come swimming with me. This is just like that time…” And he launches into another story of begging Remus to come swim when they were younger, and Remus only listens because it buys him more time. It appears that instead of having a bathroom, they are granted an outhouse a few feet back, hidden in the trees, and so now Remus is sure that Sirius will often find himself prancing about their shack naked because it’s too much of a hike to go change somewhere private.

Remus tells him, “You go, I’ll just hang about on the sand. Read my book. I don’t fancy swimming today.” Sirius is giving him a pleading look mixed with something a bit more refined, and finally gives in, much to Remus’s relief. 

The beach they’re on is blissfully empty. Sirius only sticks around to help Remus drive an umbrella into the sand and then leaves him there as he frolics down to the wet sand and the flashing turquoise waves that glitter and twist like ribbons of seawater. Sirius splashes into the gulf, arms outstretched, as though he is welcoming the sea breezes, the salty air, the crash of water, the sight of glitter waves and the smell of fresh, sharp salt in the air: he is welcoming the world he’s missed with open arms and every sense in the world. 

He is laughing out loud; Remus can hear him from back on the sand. 

Sirius straightens up even more, arms spread wide, looking like Jesus Christ himself, and then he plunges into the water. Remus might have been pretending to read his book but often finds himself watching Sirius over the top of the pages, watching the man swim, float, laugh, twist under the sun in the rolling water as though this is the best thing that could have ever happened to him.

Faintly, Remus regrets not taking him up on the offer of swimming. Sirius can make anything fun, even getting bodied by a wave and swallowing saltwater just to rise from the foamy crest of a dead wave grinning and wiping your eyes because the salt  _ stings  _ a bit _ ,  _ don’t you think? 

As evening breaks, Remus wanders down to where the water meets the sand. Sirius is floating on his back, letting waves push him around, in a starfish position. 

“Padfoot, we’d best get ready to go see Mary.” Sirius twists, now on his stomach and swimming freestyle in the water, smiling gently at Remus.

“You don’t want to run in, Moony, not really fast, not just for a dip? Just really fast? For old times’ sake?” It’s not as though Remus and Sirius have ever spent time in any ocean (or gulf, whatever) together at all in their lives, so old times’ sake must refer to the Black Lake and the Giant Squid that lived within it, and now Remus realizes that of course a second chance is being given to him, and so, of course, he takes it.

Remus wades into the water, trousers abandoned on the sand and t-shirt now soaked to his skin. It’s immature, he thinks, to keep his shirt on while wading into the ocean but Remus does not spend much time shirtless and in fact  _ is  _ permanently insecure about the offensive scars all over his chest, so he splashes in wearing his pants and shirt, and Sirius laughs out loud again: a barking, whole sound. 

“Good on you, Moony! Brilliant!” It is, in fact, rather brilliant: taking a risk, changing things up. Remus has missed Sirius more than he could ever know.

**-**

They meet Mary at a restaurant with an outdoor patio where they eat simple stewed chicken and rice and drink rum punch, just like Mary recommends, telling them it’s all traditional and all good. 

It’s a few drinks in when Mary looks between the two of them with this familiar expectant expression on her face, and then asks the age old question: “So, are you two back together?”

Sirius looks at Remus quite casually, nowhere like the jerked, fast and panicked glance that Remus had shot his way. The question is in his blue eyes:  _ Are we? _

“No.” Remus says, before he has the chance to stop himself. Sirius’s facial expression hardly changes, he just looks a little less eager and sits back in his chair, shoulders lowering only slightly.

“We haven’t discussed it.” Sirius’s voice is a bit pointed. Mary picks up on the awkwardness that she’s just created. 

“No, I reckon we haven’t…” 

“Have you seen anyone, then, Remus? Since?” Mary changes the topic to something that gets a light of interest back in Sirius’s eyes, and Remus notices that the other man  _ smirks  _ while looking at him, crossing his arms pridefully, tilting his chin a bit. As though he’s expecting Remus to say  _ No, I spent twelve years alone, all alone, crying and making lists of things I hate about myself and sleeping in dumpsters, waiting for the day my knight in dirty tatters would return from maximum security prison and ravish me again. _

Instead, Remus says yes. 

“Her name was Sam,” he tells them, “Samantha, but Sam. We were together for a few years.” 

“Really?” 

“Yes!” Remus is proving to be a bit defensive, because  _ yes,  _ he did have a girlfriend named Sam, and she reminded him very much of both Marlene and Sirius in terms of personality and levels of cool (very high). He’d been living in a dirty village in southern Scotland and she’d been a bartender with half of her head shaved and a lip ring that felt queer against his lips when he’d kissed her: cool silver. 

Sam had been a muggle, Remus had been a liar. 

They’d been alright at first, when it was just flirting and then they’d mixed sex into the mix, him stopping by the pub to meet her after work and her meeting him outside, grin on her face, stories to tell on her lips, smelling like liquor and tobacco (like Sirius, during the end of their relationship). The nights would be windy, rainy, unpleasant and they’d spend a warm night in Sam or Remus’s bed, and it had been very much no-strings-attached, until it had been.

And Sam had very many questions once one off nights turned into weeks (months, years) living together. Most of her queries had centered around why Remus disappeared once a month and returned covered in bruises and scratches; bleeding and broken and hurt. Sam, edgy as she was, chalked it up to Remus visiting some awful sort of BDSM dungeon, accusing him of such, and Remus had been so shocked that he’d admitted to it on the spot.

So Sam had broken up with him because she thought he had been cheating, and ever since, Remus has been single. He’s been a liar his whole life, cooking up long, thought out excuses for the cuts and scars, the disappearances, and the wild, hunted way he gets once a month when he is anything but human: not a man, nor a boyfriend, not anything anyone would want to spend time with.

Sirius had wanted to spend time with him as a wolf. Remus keeps this in consideration.

“What was she like?” Sirius has his chin propped up by both hands, looking very young and carefree, his eyes sparkling.

“Cool,” Remus explains, still on the defense. “She was a bartender. From Scotland. We had fun.” 

“How did it end?” Mary asks.

“Werewolf lies, you know.” It’s a very abridged version of what really happened, but Remus’s face heats up just thinking about it, about him very much admitting that he’d been going to BDSM  _ dungeons,  _ Christ, Remus hadn’t even known that those things even  _ existed _ ! Sirius, he thinks, looking at the other man with his prison tattoos and stretched ears, might be better versed in the topic.

“How was your wedding, Mary? I want to see photos when we visit again.” Sirius steers the conversation away from Remus’s broken relationships tactfully, but Remus spends the rest of the night deep in his own careful consideration of Mary’s original question:  _ Are you two back together? _

As soon as Remus had seen Sirius, he hadn’t been able to get that thought out of his head.

It had been a very strange reunion, but of course, Sirius was nothing if not for dramatic. He’d still been in his tattered Azkaban prison robes, hanging open over his wasted chest to show blackwork tattoos. His face had been skeletal, his body emaciated, hair disastrous and haggard, yet still, his face had lit up at the sight of Remus. And they had hugged, not even thinking about the three students (one of them being James’s son) watching them in genuine terror, and Remus had never been able to forget: not then, not now, not ever.

Remus starts feeling hot and wobbly after too much rum, even though it’s apparent that Mary and Sirius are built for this sort of stuff: sitting and drinking all night long, even though one of them has just spent twelve years in prison and the other is a mother of two. You would think this would be an influence on their tolerance, but they are both from Britain and have enough of a soul to keep throwing back drinks.

Remus excuses himself to use the loo. As a young adult, or maybe an old teenager, he had realized that bathroom stalls are the places in which every substance you’ve consumed in a night finally hit you, and Remus realizes the extent of his sobriety has been worn out as he stumbles around the bathroom, having trouble directing himself, and laughing out loud as he washes his hands.

This situation, to him, is supremely hilarious. About two weeks ago, give or take, he had been wrapping up his year of teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts at Hogwarts, a career which had seemed like some faraway fairytale to him. Then, of course, ‘notorious mass murderer / goofy ex boyfriend’ Sirius ‘Snuffles’ Black had been the first person to ever break out of Azkaban (no surprise there) and force himself back into Remus’s life.

They have bought a home together by the coast, and are now in  _ Trinidad,  _ taking a tropical vacation, living in a shack on the beach, and getting drinks with Mary MacDonald, who Remus hasn’t seen in over ten years. 

It’s a bloody fucking  _ laugh  _ of a situation. It’s exactly what Remus needed, and it’s so supremely typical of Sirius. He can never arrive quietly or leave without a bang. There is something unforgettable about him. 

Remus is still in love with him.

Lucky for him, Sirius and Mary seem to have descended into topics regarding love and  _ Remus,  _ as though they are back in high school and have decided to talk about people as soon as they head for the loo. Remus turns around the corner of the wall and stops short when he hears Sirius with his quiet voice on, one that had always been sort of rare for him.

“We’ve been good, Mary, we’ve been… well, it’s all been sort of casual, you know?”

“So you haven’t talked about what happened, not at all?” Remus peers further around, seeing Mary lean towards Sirius, her expression humorless. “Sirius, we were at war. We saw our best friends die. You spent twelve years in  _ Azkaban _ .” Sirius has wrapped his arms around himself, his tattooed fingers rubbing circles in each shoulder blade. He looks very small, there, still so wasted and thin. 

“Mary, I know…”

“And what’s he been up to for twelve years? Have you bothered to ask?”

“He doesn’t want to talk about it.”

“How do you know?”

“Because he  _ doesn’t  _ talk about it.”

“Because you haven’t asked him!” Mary clears her throat and lowers her voice when speaking next. “Sirius, if you want to make things right, or have some hope of getting back together, you’ve got to acknowledge what’s happened. There’s no way to heal if you’re just pretending the past never happened.” 

“I’ll…”

“You need to talk to him, Sirius. Not just about the war, but about the two of you. You’re still  _ gone _ , mate, I can see it in your eyes and I can see it in his, too.”

“What, really?”

“The way he looks at you, Sirius, it’s as though you haven’t even been gone… He’s sprung. Trust me.” 


	3. This Must Be the Place

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title is also a talking heads song title / also the song that these two losers listen to. it hardcore reminds me of wolfstar and canonically i know remus digs the talking heads (in my own personal canon lmao) so go check out the song if you want. might make you cry!

_moony:_

  * _i’m still in love with you_


  * _i spent 12 years unable to think about you (will provide a short explanation) and now that i’ve seen you again i’m completely obsessed and also i’m still in love with you_


  * _you’re the best thing that had ever happened to be and turns out you still are??_


  * _i wish we could have told mary YES we’re back together!!!_


  * _remember when we were going to get married? hahaha are you still up for it??_



_moony, i am drunk. i’m making a list of ways i could possibly talk to you about US but unfortunately i am drunk and so this won’t work out very well i’m afraid. also, hahaha, you’re never going to read this. that’s for sure. there’s no way you’ll read this. i’ll find a way to talk to you._

_it’s just fun, now, sort of, like we’re just mates living in our beach shack and i don’t think i’ve ever been this happy in my entire life, save that time we saw zeppelin live, you know. that was pretty good. but this is also good!! i love love love love love yoouuu i love you. i would like to sing to you except i’d wake you up. i’m watching you sleep hahaha. youre so handsome. i’ll talk to you tomorrow._

_i don’t know what’s wrong with me. remember when we had a song? like, Our Song? it was Your Song, which is really funny, you know, the one by elton john. we need a piano in our beach house back at home because i’d like to play it to you again. i hope you won’t mind._

Remus hasn’t woken up hungover since the 1980s and doesn’t miss it very much at all. His throat is on fire and he feels like spitting toothpicks and the metaphorical razor blades that are tearing his throat into bloody shreds.

No, he hasn’t missed this at all.

The shack is dark, at least, since there are about two small windows that Sirius has considerately left shut. Sirius, as it seems, is missing. Remus would have taken the pathetic move to call out for him and force the other man to bring him water, and tea, and headache tablets, then bring him a book, and then fuck off. 

Cure for a hangover, right?

Remus wants water, and immediately thinks of conjuring it due to their apparent lack of a kitchen, but he has no receptacle in which to direct the water from his wand. So, in his hazy, headachey state, he casts _Aguamenti_ and points the wand right at his mouth: getting a good drink and also getting water all over the bedsheets.

Oh, well. At least he’d gotten some water in his mouth. 

The concept of being awake in a state such as this doesn’t sit well with Remus, and so he rolls over in his damp bed and tries to go back to sleep. Time passes slow and hazily, and Remus drifts out of painful consciousness, sweaty and nauseous as he curls around a pillow, holding it tight to his chest and wishing that it were Sirius. 

Oh, Sirius.

Sirius makes Remus feel incredibly ill when he arrives loudly and dramatically, throwing open the windows as he shouts for Remus to get up, snap to it, got to greet the day! 

“Aaarggghhh,” Remus groans, burying himself in the covers as red hot painful sunlight fills the shack, “Please go away. I was enjoying myself so much…”

“Hahaha, you’re hungover! I knew it, mind you, I could tell it. You and I have the strangest tolerances, don’t you think? I smoke one joint and lose my head, you have one drink and you’re already pissed.”

“Ughh… why didn’t you stop me?”

“Why would I have?” Sirius’s voice comes closer. So does a certain smell. It doesn’t smell _bad,_ but Remus is hungover and any scent of food is bad in his book, and he makes an overdramatic retching sound as Sirius approaches. “I can hold a drink like a man, at least. Stop throwing up!” _You were an alcoholic,_ Remus thinks, but does not share his sentiments. 

“I’m not, Sirius, please take that food outside, or I will.” Then, all of a sudden, Sirius tears the covers off of Remus. He stands above him looking evil: diabolical grin, raised eyebrows, holding up some packets of food.

“I got us doubles! Fried dough and chickpea curry, delicious!” Sirius takes a large bite out of one of the items he’s holding. “Sit up! I’ll make you tea and you can eat one and then we’ll go for a swim and you’ll feel all better. Moony, have you wet the bed?” 

“Fuck off.”

“It’s all wet.”

“It’s just water, I cast a spell, it’s a long fucking story, jesus _christ,_ can you please get that food out of here?”

**-**

They spend two weeks living out simple days in their shack on the beach.

Waking up late, eating fresh fruit that’s sticky and juicy. The sun will be up early, the sky will be blue, and they’re welcomed out into the tropical world that should be heavy with heat and an encompassing humidity, but isn’t. Sea salt breezes from the coast blow away the humidity that settles inland on the island. 

Same breezes that blow their windchimes into life back in Cornwall. Sirius and Remus have made a second home, another home, laying them down like groundwork for lives lost wherever they go. Sirius had once told Remus that he’d never had a home. Sirius had once told Remus that home was wherever he was with him. 

And so they’d lost each other, but now they’ve ended up right back together again. A magnetic pull. Queer boys in 1975, laying in bed at night and denying their thoughts of each other because it’s wrong and shameful. Same boys, all grown up in 1994, breaking out of prisons or else watching with dismay as life brings them right back together again.

The days are long, but they are never tedious or boring.

Sirius will swim in the mornings and evenings. Remus will lounge in the shade, under an umbrella, with a big hat on and a book propped on his lap. Remus usually swims in the evenings, when there’s less light on his battered, scarred body. They usually go out after the evening swim, and twice a week are usually invited to Mary’s house for dinner.

They meet her husband Isaiah, a tall black man with a winning sense of humor. Him and Sirius get along very well. Danielle and Marlene are both scared of Remus, probably because of the scars cutting his face, but once he asks Marlene about the drawings she mentions doing, he is given a bit more trust. She brings him into her room and shows him books and books full of color pencil drawings that she’s done. Danielle follows nervously behind.

“Wow, Marlene, these are excellent. Your mum loves art, you know, she’s very good at it too. Did she teach you?” 

“No, no one _taught_ me!” Marlene is very adamant about this. “I made them all myself. I’m writing an illustrated book, too.”

“What’s it about?”

“My life. Here, look.” Marlene walks across her messy bedroom and picks up another small, colorful notebook that she presses into Remus’s hands.

“Mr. Remus, do you have any kids?” Danielle asks shyly.

“Oh, no, I don’t.” Remus is sitting on the floor surrounded by Marlene’s books and papers, and Danielle looks sad. 

“Are you and Mr. Sirius married?” Remus can feel his face heating up. 

“No, we’re not married. We’re not, er, together. We’re just friends.” 

“Why not?”

“Mum says you two used to be boyfriends,” Marlene cuts in knowingly. “And you live together. You should get married. I want to go to a wedding.”

“I want someone new to play with,” Danielle explains. “Marlene’s very mean.” 

“Haha,” Remus says, “We were together a long time ago. Not really planning any kids... well, Sirius does have a godson. His name is Harry. He lives in the U.K., and goes to Hogwarts, the school where your mum went. But he’s thirteen. A little older than you two.”

“What’s a godson?” Marlene asks.

“It’s like, well, if you’re a godparent, you’re in charge of the kid if their parents die. And Harry’s parents… died. But Sirius, erm, he wasn’t around for a while after Harry’s parents passed, so Harry went to live with his aunt. But he’s going to live with us from now on.”

“What happened to Harry’s parents?” 

“Erm…”

“What are you three up to?” Mary has interrupted at a very fitting point in the conversation, and Remus is incredibly relieved to see her standing there. 

“Marlene’s just showing me her art,” Remus says quickly. “I’m excited to read her book when it gets published.” Marlene beams, apparently forgetting about the somewhat dark turn that their conversation had taken. 

“Oh, yes, she’s very proud of her work. Danielle, your daddy’s running you a bath, so go get ready. Marlene, put on your pyjamas, okay? We have some grown up things to talk about. I’ll come say goodnight in a bit, okay?”

“I can stay up until then?” Marlene asks with a gap toothed grin.

“Yes,” Mary tells her, “But when I come say goodnight, it’s bedtime, alright? No fighting. Come on, Remus.” Remus had been listening to Mary talking to her children in a very parenting voice and is now surprised to be addressed by her in the same tone. He gets up, following her instructions, and says goodnight to Marlene and Danielle before following Mary back down the hall. 

Sirius is sitting at the wobbly kitchen table and drinking a glass of water. When he looks up at the pair of them, his eyes look a bit red rimmed. 

“All right?” Remus asks him gently as he sits down at the table. It rocks back, then forth. Mary sits down across it and steadies the table with her elbows.

“Just refreshing some of Sirius’s memories.” Mary’s voice is a bit sharper than usual. Remus is glad he’d missed out on whatever they’d talked about. “Anyways,” She continues, “When you two have all settled in at your house, I’d love to visit.” Remus looks up at her in surprise. 

“Really?”

“Yeah. Sirius told me about… visiting the graves, you know. I’d like to do that as well.” It’s a rather morbid reason for making a trip across the ocean but Remus can correctly assume there’s more to Mary’s reasoning than this. “And go back home, you know… see my sister, my mum.”

“You can meet Harry,” Remus offers. Mary’s face lights up in this way that suggests she hasn’t thought about Harry; she’s forgotten about Harry, the way so many have: the Boy Who Lived, locked up for years in a Muggle house for years and years while the Wizarding World forgets about him. 

Remus had never forgotten. 

He’d met Petunia Dursley once in his life, and once had been enough. Remus had spent some time at Lily’s house in the summer after their sixth year of Hogwarts, accompanied by James and Sirius. Mary, Marlene, and Dorcas had been there as well. They’d gone out camping the Muggle way, but Sirius had wanted to sleep under the stars, so him and Remus had spent an uncomfortable night on the hard ground while Sirius showed Remus constellations.

James had enjoyed sleeping in a tent to such a degree that he’d forced the three boys to spend every night out in Lily’s backyard, sleeping in a tent, and also to help for the lack of space in the small house. It was one of those kind, unspoken ways that James tried to make things easier for others.

Petunia had been hanging around the house in a rather unfriendly way for most of their visit. Remus had met her two days after he’d arrived. He’d been standing in the kitchen, hungover but still stoned, making tea, and she’d walked in wearing a nightdress and rollers in her hair. Remus had spluttered surprised laughter into his teacup and Petunia had shrieked loudly. 

Their conversation had gone something like:

“Sorry, hi, I’m Remus, I’m one of Lily’s friends.”

“Why are you in here? It’s six in the morning! This is _my_ house, not yours! Have some class!”

Remus hadn’t enjoyed himself while imagining the life Petunia might have given Harry. She’d often called Lily a ‘freak’, a very favorite term for her younger sister, and had apparently taken to referring to James using only racist slurs instead of his actual name; turned down Lily’s invitation to her wedding with James and essentially cut off her sister for good after she’d graduated Hogwarts. Three years later, Lily had died, and Petunia had been given another child to raise.

Remus himself had not had a happy childhood either. His mum, Hope, had been sickly throughout her life, and after Remus had been bitten at age five, she’d deteriorated even more. She had always been depressed throughout his life, going through bright and dark periods, but things had gotten worse and worse after he’d started Hogwarts. She had died during his fifth year. Remus privately had been glad that she’d not lived to see the war. 

Lyall Lupin, his dad, had been overworked, burnt out, and depressed. He’s not much better these days. Remus had essentially been neglected as a kid and had felt broken hearted and powerless at the thought of the same thing happening to Harry. The same thing _has_ happened to Harry. Remus and Sirius are going to change that. 

They say a long goodbye to Mary. It’s the last time they’ll see her for a while. She says, “I’ve missed you two” with tearful eyes. “I’m so glad you’re back, Sirius, I’m _so_ glad. I’d never stopped missing you. I love you.”

“I love you too,” Sirius sniffles, laughing as he cries over her shoulder. “I’ll see you soon, okay? Stay in touch?”

“You can’t get rid of me now.” Mary grins at him, gives Remus a hug, and tells him to take care. Sirius is very quiet on the walk home, evidently lost in his thoughts. Remus misses him loud: singing, dancing, skipping down the street. 

“What did you talk about?” Remus asks gently. Sirius glances up at him with knit eyebrows. 

“Erm, the war, you know.” Sirius’s voice is unsure and a bit shaky. He’d had his fair share to drink tonight, but like he’d said, he does know how to hold his liquor. “Well, my issues, you know. The drinking.”

“Oh.”

“I reckon I’d forgotten.” 

“Easy to forget something that never happens sober.” Sirius doesn’t respond to this. “Sorry.”

“ _I’m_ sorry. I didn’t realize… I mean, does it upset you? Or make you uncomfortable?” 

“Does what?”

“That I drink?” The night is sweat hot. Streetlights light up the fronds of palm trees orange, and low seated cars hum through the darkened streets. The sky is never truly black, here, always a deep navy at night. 

Remus had hated Sirius in 1981. The man he once loved had turned into an abusive, manipulative stranger with glazed eyes and a forked tongue that spat insults and made up for them with tears and pleads for forgiveness. Always smelled like something sharp and amber: beer, whiskey, rum. His jokes never hit, his face never properly smiled, he was either angry, sad, or not knowing where he was.

“No, Pads. Not now. I used to hate it, but you had a problem. Just… you’ve got to stay away from old habits, okay?”

“Yeah…” Sirius pushes his hair back with both hands. “I’m really sorry, for how I was back then.” 

“That’s alright.” They’re home before too long. It’s a quiet night. Sirius had befriended a Scarlet Ibis a few days ago, and sent the bird on a trip with Mary’s owl to see if he could deliver post. He had been gone a week, and returned with a letter from Harry all the way in Scotland. Sirius had been incredibly pleased, named the bird Mr. Vicious, and is planning on taking him back to England with them. Mr. Vicious sits in their windowsill next to a pile of worms and small fish that he had collected and chokes them down his beak as Remus and Sirius get ready for bed. They only say ‘goodnight’ to each other before falling asleep in different beds. 

The next day is their last one in Trinidad. A familiar schedule: swimming, reading, going out to get lunch, taking a long walk, swimming, reading, and then at night, the dreaded task of packing. 

Sirius had bought many, many things during their stay in Port of Spain and folds up his impressive collection of Trinidadian shirts, colorful swim trunks, wooden carvings of birds, packets of dried tropical fruit, necklaces made of beads and feathers, and other assorted things. Sirius has always been a piece of living color, something wild and vibrant, and Remus’s heart aches a small bit as he thinks about leaving this place behind, another home for the two of them to pass through. 

Sirius had picked up a shitty old record player found by the side of the road on a trip down to San Fernando, because of course Remus had brought his records with him. How could he not have? Remus has an inherited, glossy nice Victrola that he’s genuinely in love with back at home, but he keeps music close to him for comfort, always.

Cheesy but true: music had been one of the few things keeping him tethered to the world after things had gone so wrong. He had found solace in it. Sirius, in some ways, had been wrong about Remus’s favorite bands.

Belle & Sebastian have become one of his favorite groups. Talking Heads, too, since they often reminded him of music that Sirius would have loved to hear. Remus puts on Speaking in Tongues, one night, while very reluctantly packing up his things for their inevitable return to England. 

Sirius dances, of course, shaking his hips and his hair while moving to the music. Remus had always remembered him most in movement, and dancing, of course. Remus’s parents had used to go swing dancing at a club every week, and his mum had then taught him the basic steps one Christmas, spinning around their living room while Remus tripped over his feet and laughed out loud.

Remus had then attempted to teach Sirius to swing, which hadn’t worked so well, but he’d been much better at ballroom and even more surprisingly adept at salsa. Sirius knows how to work a rhythm, a beat in his hips, a pattern to his footsteps, a laugh on his face. 

Sirius loves Slippery People, given, singing loudly even though he doesn’t know the words, and waves his arms back and forth while laughing out loud. Moon Rocks is another favorite of his, but it’s the last song that gets Sirius in a bit of a state, the same way it does for Remus.

This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody). 

It’s always been a bit of a heartbreaking song to Remus, and so he usually pulls the record off when it comes on, but Sirius asks him what he’s doing when he tries to take it off. 

“You don’t like this song?”

“No, it’s really good, it just makes me…. sad.”

“Oh. Leave it on, though.”

“Okay.” 

Remus sits on his bed and watches Sirius pack up all the colorful clothes he’d bought on the island, and the souvenirs that he’s going to line their house with. It’s by the end that Remus sees Sirius wipe tears from his eyes. 

_I’m just an animal looking for a home and share the same space for a minute or two_

_And you love me ‘til my heart stops_

_Love me ‘til I’m dead_

“Alright, Pads?” Sirius sniffs and turns back towards Remus with a watery smile. “I warned you.”

“Yeah, it’s…” The song fades out and record scratch silence fills the shack. “It’s not _sad,_ it’s just… Oh, I dunno. You were right.” Sirius wipes his face. His cheeks are pinker than usual, eyes blue and overbright, and he takes a deep breath. 

“It always made me think of you,” Remus says gently. 

“I love you.” Remus looks up rather sharply, seeing that Sirius’s always moving body has finally stilled, and he stands quite calmly by his own bed. The only thing off about this is how he won’t meet Remus’s eyes. Sirius, much like James, has always been a champion of holding eye contact. Remus and Sirius had undergone many fights during the war about how Remus would never look him in the eyes, because it meant he was lying, because he _was_ lying because all they did back then was lie to each other.

“I’ve never stopped, actually,” Sirius continues, “So this isn’t a new confession. It’s just the same as always.” Now, he looks up. His blue grey eyes, eyes like the great big sky, settle evenly on Remus. He’s waiting for a _response._ Of _course_ Remus is in love with him, he’s never stopped, but how does he explain that? 

Remus doesn’t reply, so Sirius fills his silence. The way he always has.

“In Azkaban,” Sirius begins, as though this isn’t somewhat of a non sequitur, “I couldn’t think about you. Like, I honestly _couldn’t._ If I did, the dementors would twist the thoughts and it would just be you dying, or hurt, or alone… And so I just _didn’t_ think about you, so I could preserve the good memories, you know? And I got out, and I was Padfoot, and I still didn’t think about you, and then I finally transformed back into me.”

Sirius pauses here, maybe for dramatic effect or maybe to organize his thoughts. He sits down on the bed instead of pacing, which had used to be a very big pastime of theirs, and looks back up at Remus.

“When I finally let myself think about you, it was mental. It was everything all at once. I had to sit there for a whole bloody week to cry it out and think about what we had. I’d never gotten over it, over _you,_ and when I saw you again…”

“I feel the same way,” Remus mumbles. “Not the _same,_ you know, but I tried so hard to keep you off my mind because it hurt so badly. Well, plus I thought you were a traitor.” Sirius laughs but the sound is weak and watery. “And then, going back to Hogwarts, there were so many memories, and I started putting the pieces together with Peter, and then I saw you…” 

Sirius and Remus sit on their beds across the shack from each other and look, just look, hold this eye contact and understand that somehow, they’ve been given a second chance. They are taking it. 

“And I love you, Sirius, I love you too, of course I love you. I don’t think I ever properly stopped, either.”

“I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you.” Sirius says this in past tense because it might be a bit rash to say the same thing now. But no, would it be? Voldemort has been gone for fourteen years. Sirius is free from Azkaban, Harry will finally have a loving home to return to away from Hogwarts, Remus has found himself some reasons to live again. 

Remus doesn’t feel any hesitation when saying, “I _do_ want to spend the rest of my life with you, Sirius, why would we stay apart?” Sirius looks unsure, almost, like he’s in disbelief. “I don’t want to be apart from you.”

“I don’t want to either.” It’s very simple, then, the unspoken agreement between them. “So let’s not,” Sirius continues. “Let’s not.” 

“Great.” Sirius grins.

“Grand.” Remus smiles right back. “Trust Talking Heads to bring us properly back together, eh, Moony? Got David Byrne to thank for it? He can play our wedding!”


	4. The Godfather and The Punk

_ Harry Potter _

_ The Burrow _

_ August 19th, 1994 _

_ Sirius Black _

_ 24 Sunny Corner Lane  _

_ Penzance, County Cornwall  _

_ Sirius, _

_ Things went wrong at the World Cup. Death Eaters came, and there was a Dark Mark sent up. The Weasleys said I could stay until term starts, but I’d like to see you before going back to school.  _

_ Would you be able to pick me up from the Dursleys tomorrow at 2? Their address is 4 Privet Drive in Little Whinging, in Surrey. I’ll have all my things packed up so I won’t have to ever go back. Please let me know if you can.  _

_ Harry _

Sirius and Remus stay up talking on their first night back in England. They’re still on Trinidad time, “Portkey-lagged!” Remus had joked, his smile only dying when Sirius had required an explanation. It’s four in the morning by the time either of them consider getting some sleep: this time, in the same bed. 

They fall asleep very warm in a tangle of heavy blankets and covers that Sirius keeps piled on his bed. He always steals most of them, anyways. They’d been asleep for maybe half an hour before a loud tapping comes at the windowpane. 

“Mmph,” Sirius mumbles, flipping over in bed. “Leave it.” 

“It’s an owl,” Remus protests, sitting up in bed and flicking on the lamp while Sirius protests even louder and buries his face under a pillow. “Come on, Pads, it might be an emergency.” Remus crawls out of bed and opens up the window, taking the note from a handsome brown owl who flies off before Remus can stop to think of who he might belong to. 

“Who is it, the bloody queen?”

“Harry.”

“Oh, probably about the World Cup. I’ll read it tomorrow.”

“You don’t want to know if Ireland won?”

“I’m asleep.”

“I’m going to open it, Pads, why would he be writing you at four in the morning?” Sirius gives a very exaggerated snore while Remus gently teases the envelope open. He reads it once over. “Padfoot, it’s serious.  _ Sirius _ !” 

“What,  _ christ,  _ what?” Sirius finally sits up- his hair a tangled mess around his bare shoulders, wiping his bleary eyes as he reaches for the letter. Remus stands in nervous silence as Sirius reads the letter a few times over. “Fuck.” 

“I know.”

“ _ Fuck.  _ I’m going, then, is that alright? To the Dursleys?”

“Of course.”

“Do you want to come?”

“What?”

“Can you come with me?” Sirius rests the note on his lap and looks at Remus with clear grey eyes that scream silent fear and not knowing how to do this on his own.  _ Can you come with me?  _ means  _ I need you to come with me, even though this has nothing to do with you,  _ and Remus should know better than to argue the fact by now but when it comes to Harry and Sirius’s relationship, Remus feels like a blurry stranger in the background with no relation at all. A professor, at most. Nothing more personal than that.

“Do you need me to? Harry didn’t ask for me. All I am is his ex-professor.”

“Well, you’re technically his godfather in law, so, yes, I need you to.” 

“In law?” Sirius’s cheeks heat up a bit, but he tilts his chin up with characteristic Sirius Black unapologeticness. 

“Yes,” He says, “In law. You’re coming with me.”

**-**

Number 4 Privet Drive looks like just the place Lily and James would not have wanted their son to grow up. 

The Potter and Evans houses had both been cluttered and kitschy, full of assorted objects that their family members had found: obscure posters layered on top of wallpaper, magical objects in the Potter household and Muggle heirlooms in the Evans one, like Lily’s mum’s great aunt’s collection of teacups that had been stuffed into a clear cupboard and tipped over by one James Potter as he stumbled into their house drunk. 

The whole thing had crashed loud enough to kill and James had fixed it with magic while Lily covered her hands with her mouth and prayed nobody would wake. Remus hadn’t been there, just heard the story. Remus stands hand in hand with Sirius and wonders if there are any happy memories, anecdotes of stories full of laughter and love from this house.

“It’s two,” Sirius tells him. “We’re right on time.” Remus lets him lead the way down the front walk. They’re both dressed in Muggle clothes but Sirius looks as rebellious as usual, wearing dark jeans, an old Rolling Stones shirt that belongs to Remus, and his old leather jacket: cracked and studded, smelling like tobacco and midnight. There are black plugs in his ears and he looks like the housing committee in Little Whinging would wrap him in two bin bags before throwing him in the rubbish of Things That Don’t Belong.

Sirius does a jaunty little knock on the front door while Remus hovers nervously behind. The door is opened almost right away. Harry flings himself onto Sirius with a great big hug as soon as he sees him. 

“Very eager, aren’t you?” Sirius laughs a bit as he hugs Harry back. The boy has his eyes closed behind those round glasses, but when he opens them, he sees Remus. This is obviously unexpected for him.

“What-?” He asks, pulling back from Sirius and stepping around him to get a better look at Remus. “Professor Lupin, why’re you here?” Remus had gone over this conversation many times in his head and never found a proper response. 

“Er-”

“Remus is my partner.” Sirius tells Harry. The boy’s eyes widen, and he looks back and forth from Remus to Sirius before they’re interrupted-

“Partner?” A large man with an incredibly bushy mustache and piggy eyes is glaring at them from the doorway. “Going to live with two queers, your parents would be rolling in their graves.”

“You don’t know the first thing about my parents,” Harry snaps at him darkly. He turns back to Sirius with an apologetic expression on his face. “I’ll get my things, I won’t be a moment.” He turns back into the house where the large man, Mr. Dursley, steps in front of him as if to block his way. “Move,” Harry spits, “I’m leaving.” Dursley doesn’t move. Harry pushes past him and storms into the house. 

Dursley looks Sirius up and down with a sneer curling his lip. Sirius stands a little straighter. 

“You’re his godfather, then?” 

“I am.” Dursley scoffs at him. 

“Bloody queer felon raising my nephew… He’ll need all the luck he can get.” Sirius doesn’t reply. “Have you even got a job?” 

“Remus is a professor,” Sirius says in a means of avoiding the question, gesturing back at Remus who still hasn’t stepped any closer. “Smartest man I’ve ever met.” Dursley’s piggy eyes flicker over to Remus, as though he hasn’t noticed him until now. He doesn’t say anything, but his watery blue eyes linger on the scars cutting his face. 

Harry reappears in the doorway, puffing for breath, dragging two massive trunks behind him with a cage under his arm. 

“Here, let me help,” Sirius offers, attempting to step past Dursley who is just standing and watching the scene unfold. Dursley steps in front of him, causing Sirius to rock back on his heels to avoid crashing into him.

“You’ll take care to ask permission before entering my house.” His voice is a snarl. 

“Oh, piss off,” Harry snaps. “It’s fine, Sirius. Uncle Vernon,  _ please _ move _ ,  _ so I can finally leave.” Dursley moves back as Harry individually drags each trunk out onto the front walk. He hands his owl’s cage to Sirius, who passes it to Remus, and then picks up one of the trunks. All three of them glare at Vernon for a long moment. 

“Goodbye,” Harry tells him stiffly.

“Good luck,” Vernon tells him emotionlessly, and then shuts the door in his face. 

Very passionately and with great gusto, Harry says “Fuck ‘em,” and then turns back to Sirius and Remus with a halfway nervous expression on his face, glancing between the two of them. Sirius beams. 

“Good on you, Harry! Let’s head home, eh?” 

Sirius and Harry make obscene conversation the entire journey home while Remus listens and thinks that Sirius being Harry’s newfound father is the worst idea that James could have ever thought up. It seems that the Knight Bus has even more stops than usual, and Remus sits and tries to keep his stomach in check while they bang about London at dizzying speeds. Harry seems completely unphased by it all, and Remus wonders if he’s taken the bus before. 

“Well, the first time your dad met your aunt and uncle it was a  _ right  _ laugh,” Sirius is explaining. “James told me the full story. They all went out to dinner, double date situation, and then Vernon started bragging about his car, so James started bragging about his broom!” Harry laughs. “‘ _ Goes up to 200 kilometers, excellent cushioning charms,’  _ that sort of stuff, and you could tell Vernon was getting hacked off about it, so he starts bragging about his  _ drill  _ job-”

“It’s such a bloody stupid job! Drills!” Harry puts in. Sirius does not reprimand him for his language.

“I  _ know!  _ I remember the first time Lily told us he had a  _ drilling  _ job, it took hours for her to explain what exactly he did and, to this day, I’ve never understood! Well, Vernon was on about his high paying job and then James started in about his fortune-”

“No, he didn’t.”

“Yes he did!  _ ‘Sleekeazy’s hair potion, tames even the most bothersome barnet _ ’-”

“My mate Ron has some of that stuff!”

“It  _ is  _ an empire. Your granddad created it, Harry, don’t forget! And so, your dad and Vernon are essentially having a,” Sirius gestures to his crotch, “Measuring contest,” Harry laughs out loud while Remus feels his face go unreasonably red, “And Petunia gets angry and storms out, Vernon right behind her, and your poor mum just bursts into tears.” Harry is laughing so hard at this story that tears have risen to his own eyes, and he wipes them away deftly. 

“That’s- ha!- Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia never mentioned that. Don’t see why they would. I’ve never… well, I’ve never heard too much about my parents.” Harry looks a little bit forlorn at this. Remus remembers that the whole reason they’re even sitting on the Knight Bus with Harry right now is because of Death Eaters at the Quidditch World Cup and instead of talking about the horrors of what had happened, they are instead sharing stupid stories.

“Professor Lupin, you were really close to my parents, then?” Remus is surprised at being addressed directly by Harry, and feels nervous as he looks over at the boy.

“Yes, I was…”

“And you never properly told me?” Sirius doesn’t interrupt this part of the conversation. He, too, is watching Remus.

“I’m sorry, Harry, I did want to tell you. It was just difficult, last year, being back at school with all the memories of them. I didn’t know how much it means to you.” Harry doesn’t reply for a moment, green eyes flickering over Remus’s. 

“So both of you were best friends with my dad?” Remus nods. “Then how long have you two been married?”

“We’re not married!” Remus replies very quickly. “Not at all.”

Sirius takes over now: “Though we  _ did  _ just take a honeymoon down to Trinidad, you got my photos, right Haz?” Harry nods. “It was more of a relationship honeymoon, I assume. Well, we just about got back together maybe two nights ago. We’d started dating back, hmm, 1976? I reckon I missed our ten year anniversary, but we can celebrate our twentieth in two years!” Remus shoves him softly, face heating up again. 

“We can’t call it twenty years, I saw other people.”

“ _ Cheater!”  _ Sirius gasps dramatically. 

“So you started dating in… your sixth year?”

“Fifth.” Sirius and Remus say in unison. 

“Well, Professor Lupin, you had a thing for bad boys, huh?” Remus wants to die. Harry does not have a right to sound so much like his mother when asking a question this vulgar. Sirius laughs loudly and claps Harry on the back as though approving of his actions. 

“Please, Harry,” Remus mumbles pathetically, “Just call me Remus.” 

“ _ Remus  _ here was the bad boy at first, Harry, mind you. Taught me how to roll my own fags, my own joints, grew magic mushrooms during our sixth year, complete and utter stoner-”

“You  _ weren’t. _ ” Harry is now looking at Remus with admiring eyes. Remus shrugs. He remembers, quite clearly, the almighty waste of trying to teach Sirius how to roll joints. They’d do it in the dorms, getting ground bud worked into the wooden grooves of the windowsill, and Sirius would mash the thin, dusty paper around the weed and Remus would wince, telling him to be gentle, to have some  _ nuance  _ and Sirius would say it didn’t matter, they’d be high by the end of it either way. 

“Oh, he totally was. Got me into punk music, actually, I wouldn’t have known a thing about it if not for our Remus here. I was raised all pureblooded and stupid, and Remus was from the wrong side of the tracks.” Remus would tell him to shut up but does not currently possess the heart to do it.

“Where did you grow up, Prof- Remus?”

“Wales.” Remus’s voice is very scratchy and he clears his throat before continuing. “Small town, you get up to no good. I was a very bad influence.” 

“You were a stoner.”

“That is  _ so  _ cool. Do you still smoke?” Harry has this young, wide eyed look on his face that has Remus regretting everything. He had only come with Sirius to provide support, not to get sucked into an apparently hilarious conversation about assorted psychoactive drugs with a fourteen year old.

“No.” Sirius raises his eyebrows. “Well,  _ sometimes,  _ but I only use weed as a medicine. Over the full moons.” Sirius calls bullshit and Remus turns his nose up in means of ignoring him while Sirius just laughs at him. 

“Can I- would you let me try some?” Harry asks, most definitely pushing his limits. 

“Hahaha,” Remus says, “No.”

“Rots your brain,” Sirius mumbles.

“No, it doesn’t. Harry, I’m not going to smoke a joint with you.” Harry puts on this pleading face that Remus has seen mirrored on James’s so many times. “No, no, that is far too immoral for even me to do. Ask Sirius, go down to London and ask someone there, but not me. Sorry!” 

Harry gets this look on his face that says  _ I want to smoke weed with my Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor  _ and Remus, as he does, regrets everything. There is an almighty crash, twist, bang, and they have finally arrived in Cornwall after their stops around London. Remus feels the contents of his stomach crawl up his throat in a hot and impulsive motion, and he swallows them down with great difficulty. 

Harry and Sirius are already on the move- both of them seem to possess an insane sort of excitement that relates to their movement- always on their feet, pulling at their hair, tapping their legs, talking to fill the space of a silence. Once again, in a painful type of way, Remus is reminded incredibly of James by the presence of his son. Harry is different, despite him looking nearly the same, he is bolder, his humor is much sharper, there is less arrogance in the way he holds himself and speaks.

He’d hardly known his parents. Of course their personalities wouldn’t have rubbed off on a one year old who was hardly speaking, much less picking up on their thought patterns and frames of reference. 

Remus limps off of the bus and takes a shaky breath of salty, seaside air that has come to resemble home. The sky is a robin’s egg blue, dotted with clouds and stretching off over the sea into a world where it will warp and shift. Somewhere, the sun is rising, and somewhere it sets in a blur of pink, purple, orange, and violet. 

Harry and Sirius move ahead of him, but Remus doesn’t mind. He limps slowly behind them, pausing at the edge of the street to look at the house that has now become home. It’s small, stone, and has curtains in the windows that Sirius had put up. They’re printed with tropical fruits. There’s a small front garden full of weeds that Remus hasn’t had time to cultivate just yet, and a mailbox painted yellow, and the front door painted the same color. 

Remus hears Harry call it charming, and he smiles to himself, because it is. 

They are sitting on the sofa, talking to one another, by the time Remus comes in with Harry’s owl’s cage. 

“Harry,” He says, stopping at the edge of the room, feeling the boards creak beneath his feet, “What’s your owl’s name?”

“Oh, Hedwig.” Harry stands up and takes the cage from Remus, unlocks it and reaches his arm out for Hedwig to use as a perch. “She’s been angry at being cooped up at the Dursleys’, they won’t let me let her fly. Do you mind if I let her out?” Remus shakes his head, Sirius gives an “it’s no problem” affirmative. 

Harry opens one of the windows and shakes his arm to let Hedwig take off into the bright afternoon. He turns around, gives Remus a tight smile, and then goes to sit back down next to Sirius, where whatever conversation they’d been having picks right back up. Feeling a bit odd and as though he shouldn’t be there, Remus retreats into the kitchen and puts on the kettle as some form of comfort. 

They had not had much tea to drink in Trinidad, which is maybe the one sad thing about their trip, as Remus has the same tea-addiction that anyone from Great Britain houses, and now he clatters about the kitchen as Harry and Sirius speak in low and secretive voices that Remus doesn’t like so much. He feels, in a way, left out, as though he doesn’t belong here.

For one, this isn’t his house. It’s Sirius’s. And he remembers that wary look in Harry’s eyes as he looked between the two of them, the surprised  _ Professor Lupin, why are you here?,  _ the way Remus is currently an outsider in an uncomfortable situation. 

“What kind of tea would you like, Harry?” He’s burst into the living room where Harry and Sirius sit on the sofa both looking very worried all of a sudden. 

“Sorry?” Harry asks, as though he’s never been given a choice. Remus is an avid tea collector and wonders if he’s only standing here twisting his hands nervously so Sirius will look at him, so  _ Harry  _ will look at him and he’ll feel a little more like a real person. “I don’t really care,” Harry continues, “I’ll take anything.”

“Make that apple stuff.” Sirius has some direction for Remus, at least. “That’s good.”

“Okay.”

“Thanks!” Harry calls as Remus disappears back into the kitchen. He can hear Sirius talk to the boy, telling him  _ Oh, Remus just needs something to do…  _ Remus does need something to do other than make tea and follow Sirius around like a lost puppy. 

Remus makes apple tea for them all. He adds almond milk, honey. 

Sirius likes it, because Sirius likes autumn. It reminds him of Hogwarts, Remus knows. The red and orange of leaves in the fall, that unnatural vibrance of life before it dies. You could sit outside on a warm day and a cold breeze would pick at your clothes. Hagrid would grow pumpkins the size of small cars. Sirius and James transfigured them into carriages, one year.

Colder weather made it so Sirius’s leather jacket didn’t stick to his skin in the hot summer. The sky would be blue but chilled, it all felt like biting into a crisp apple and having juice dribble down your chin. James and Lily died in the fall, and so Remus had never thought of it fondly since the autumn of 1981 where the sky had been a literal blue but Remus had only been seeing black.

Things had been very dark. 

When Remus brings out the tea to the living room, Sirius and Harry are laughing again. Sirius has a way of minimizing serious conversations to make them as short as possible, since he takes no great pains to sit and talk about sad things, not like Remus. Remus could go on for hours about the misery of his life. 

“Everything alright?” He asks them as he hands out the teacups. 

“Jolly good.” Sirius grins at Harry, who returns the expression. “We were going to go to the shops, get some food Harry likes.” Harry is going to be incredibly spoiled while staying here, Remus realizes. “Do you want to cook tonight?”

“I can.”

“I can cook, too.” Harry offers quickly. “I cooked at the Dursleys’ all the time. I’m happy to help.”

“Nonsense, you don’t have to!”

“If you’d like.” Remus and Sirius speak at the same time, and glare at each other with false flames in their eyes. Harry looks worried, though, glancing back and forth between the pair of them.

“It’s no trouble.” 

“I’ll cook tonight.” Remus can decide on that, at least. “Harry, if you’d like to make something, get some food for the recipes. I’m going to go for a walk.” Sirius does not protest, and neither does Harry. 

Remus’s walk takes him down to the sea, to the cold coast that Sirius would still swim in despite the temperatures. Remus imagines him throwing his hair back, water droplets flying as he laughs out loud, and Remus feels a warmth in his chest at this. He does not want to think about Harry coming between them, as dramatic as it sounds. 

He stands at the edge of England and misses Trinidad.

**-**

Sirius and Remus continue their argument after dinner, which had been a lazily assembled cottage pie that everyone had complimented, much to Remus’s embarrassment. They had played a few rounds of cards after dinner, gone for a walk, and then returned home where Harry had bid them goodnight and retreated to his bedroom while Sirius and Remus had gone to theirs and started to fight.

It’s about the cooking thing, which Remus had all but forgotten about over the course of the evening.

Sirius says, “If the Durlseys force him to cook, then I don’t want him to!”

“He was  _ offering, _ ” Remus argues, not even knowing why they’re fighting about something so stupid, “He was trying to be helpful. If he doesn’t want to, he doesn't have to! No one’s going to  _ make  _ him. There’s nothing wrong with pulling your weight.”

“Oh, of course, you want him to owe you for being here-”

“Did I say that? When did I say that? Why are we fighting about this?” Sirius chews his lip very angrily, and tugs absentmindedly at his ears where the plugs stretch the skin like rubber bands. For the first time, Remus finds them a bit sickly. 

“Sorry, Moony,” Sirius gives in, “I just want him to feel good here, you know, comfortable. I’ve never been a  _ parent.  _ I just want him to be happy.”

“There’s a difference between spoiling him and having him be happy.”

“Moony, I think this is some childhood trauma thing.” If Sirius is trying to make a joke, Remus doesn’t find it funny. “You didn’t get enough as a kid, so you think you’ll do the same.” Remus lets this sink into the air. Sirius shifts, now, tugs at one of his ears again and then scratches at the back of his neck. Remus just stares at him. Sirius looks back, twisting his cheek as he bites the inside of it. 

“Is that really how you feel?”

“No,” Sirius laughs and the sound is unwelcome, “I don’t know why I said that, it was stupid and it’s wrong, and I’m sorry.”

“It’s like me saying you were abused as a kid so now you’re going to go abuse Harry.”

“I know, I’m sorry, that was dumb.”

“I just don’t want him spoilt.”

“Right, you  _ say  _ that, but what’s wrong with being a little spoiled? He’ll be at Hogwarts, and he spends an awful lot of time with the Weasleys, so it’s like he’s coming to  _ Sirius’s _ place and it’s like going to your grandparents, or something, you eat a lot of sweets and lie around doing nothing.” Sirius pauses. “That’s what happens at your grandparents’, right? I never did that.”

“Yes, that’s what happens,” Remus pushes on indifferently, “But you can be fair to a kid and not give them  _ everything  _ they want. Then they get selfish, and they don’t understand boundaries, and they’re lazy.” Then comes a very loud knock on the door. Both Sirius and Remus jump, as though they’ve been caught doing something they shouldn’t be. Sirius is the one to move towards the door, shooting Remus a dark look, and then opening it.

Harry is standing with his arms crossed, looking well cross.

“I can hear you, just by the way, and sorry if this is rude, but youse are having the most ridiculous fight I’ve ever heard. I know what spoiled is,” He directs this at Remus with raised eyebrows, “Like my cousin Dudley throwing a fit if he doesn’t get the same amount of birthday presents every year, because he counts. Sirius, I’m not offering to cook because I feel like I owe you, I’m offering to be nice and help. Learn to say yes. And please, don’t fight about me.” 

“Right,” Remus mumbles bashfully while Sirius says “Sorry, Harry.” The boy stares at them through narrowed eyes, arms still crossed over his chest. Then he relaxes, nodding and giving them a weak smile. 

“Just don’t let me catch you at it again. Crazy buggers.” 


	5. Calm Before

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comments are my fuel so pls feel free to leave feedback! ❤️

_ NAME: Sirius, Orion Black _

_ADDRESS: 24 Sunny Corner Lane, Penzanc_ _e, Cornwall_

_ POSITION SOUGHT: Auror  _

_ AVAILABLE START DATE: September 4th, 1994 _

_ ARE YOU CURRENTLY EMPLOYED? Yes/ _ **_No_ **

_ LAST EMPLOYMENT:  _ **_None_ **

_ SPECIALIZED TRAINING:  _ **_None - Received some Auror training during the Wizarding War, have advanced dueling skills_ **

_ EDUCATION:  _ **_Graduated Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry in 1978, five N.E.W.Ts_ **

“I guess Sirius is trying to be an Auror?”

“Hm?” Harry holds up a bit of paper in response. Sirius and Remus have always been quite untidy, and it’s not unusual for personal papers to find themselves littered all over the house, along with dirty clothes, clean clothes, records, books, boots, and other assorted objects. 

“Job application,” Harry mumbles, shoving the paper across the table to Remus. It’s the last day of August and Harry is set to leave for this fourth year at Hogwarts tomorrow morning. Mornings, as it happens, are times of day where Sirius makes himself completely absent due to his inability to wake up earlier than ten o’clock. 

“Oh, Jesus Christ.” Harry glances up at Remus over his bowl of cereal. “Auror department? Sirius?”

“That’s what I thought,” Harry says, “I feel like he’s not the type.”

“He’s  _ not _ the type… James was the type.”

“My dad?” Harry looks at Remus a little closer now, adjusting his glasses and straightening up his slumped posture. 

“Yeah, he was… well, once he grew up, he could follow directions. Very brave, very adept, empathetic. He would’ve made an amazing Auror. I mean, realistically, he would have played Quidditch professionally. A few agents were interested in him.” 

“No way!”

“Yeah, when he became captain, sixth year, they showed up every so often at matches.” Remus remembers James’s passion for Quidditch with a fondness, now. At the time, his emotions had been a mixed bag while most of them involved annoyance, misunderstanding, and plain exasperation. “But the war started, and James’s dad, your granddad, was working with Dumbledore, and their house was Order headquarters, and James wanted to fight.” 

Harry pokes at his rapidly dampening cereal. 

“Order?”

“Order of the Phoenix,” Remus tells him, the name sticking in his throat as he says it out loud, “It was sort of a resistance effort, you could say. Dumbledore put it together to fight against the Death Eaters.”

“And you were in it?”

“Yes. Me, Sirius, your parents, many other people. Mary, she’s the one we visited in Trinidad, she’s one of the other few who lived.” Harry watches Remus with interest. 

“Who else lived?”

“Ah, well… Me, Sirius, of course, Mary, Dumbledore, Alastor Moody, he was head of the Aurors, amazing man, there’s Kingsley Shacklebolt, Mundungus Fletcher, the Weasleys-”

“The Weasleys?” Harry asks. “Who- Mr. and Mrs. Weasley? They were fighting?” Remus remembers that seeing Arthur Weasley at meetings always meant relief, since the easygoing man was never set on the most dangerous missions, usually just reconnaissance ones since he had a handful of young kids at home as well as a pregnant wife. Remus’s missions with Arthur had always been his favorites. They’d always gone for a pint afterwards, pretending they had just gotten off a long day of work, and Remus had loved that more than he would ever admit. He had been so very grateful.

“Well, Arthur was very involved in planning missions. We went on a few together. He’s a good man, Arthur. You made a good friend in Ron.” Harry looks a little bashful and nods anyways. “The Longbottoms, too, I suppose you could say they survived…”

“Longbottoms? Like, Neville’s family?” Harry frowns. “What do you mean?” Remus realizes that Neville hasn’t told Harry about what happened to his parents. Remus, more than anything, understands the heavy weight of a secret. He’d been taught to keep them from a young age, for a good reason, but understands the decision of holding something so personal close and not sharing it. 

“Erm,” Remus begins to feel a bit uncomfortable, “I think Neville hasn’t told you for a reason.” 

“Told me what?” Harry demands. “You can’t just give me a mystery and then not tell me what about!” 

“Calm down, Harry, it’s something quite serious.” Harry quiets. “Neville’s parents are in St. Mungo’s. After Voldemort fell, a few Death Eaters hunted down members of the Order to try to find his location. They thought they were involved in his death. Alice and Frank, Neville’s parents, were incredible Aurors, incredible people…” Remus finds a lump in his throat as he speaks and clears his throat before continuing.

“A few Death Eaters went after them, kidnapped them, and tortured them with the Torture Curse for information. But they didn’t have any…” Harry looks quite stricken, now. “They went mad. They have to live at St. Mungo’s now… they’ve lost most of their memories. They’re not the same.” 

“Oh.” There is a silence between them, and Remus lets it hang in the air. Harry stares down into his bowl. “Sorry.” 

“That’s alright. I’d, er, appreciate it if you wouldn’t mention this to Neville, though.”

“Yeah, of course, of course.” Harry looks up, his green eyes still bright with worry. “God, Remus, that’s so… that’s so  _ sad.  _ The war, I mean, it sounds awful. I’m so sorry, god, I’m so sorry.” 

“That’s alright.” Remus repeats. Harry’s birth had been a bright spot in the wartime darkness. 

Amongst the deaths of classmates, loved ones, people he’d looked up to for years, Remus had seen this life and birth as something hopeful in the smallest of ways; the way Harry gurgled while wrapping his chubby little fist tight around Remus’s index finger and the smile on his gummy face, the way his green eyes sparkled with interest in the whole wide world around him. Remus had seen a baby Harry and thought maybe this would change this, maybe this would make things okay, to have a little innocent person to fight for and protect.

Then things had gotten so much worse. 

Remus hadn’t realized that he’d lapsed into a solemn silence, and watches as Harry gets up to do the washing up, leaving Remus alone at the table, staring down at Sirius’s application. 

**-**

Remus does not bring up the application to Sirius that day, or that night, because he is extra talented at avoiding confrontation and thinks that in some way, this is none of his business. If Sirius wants to be an Auror, it  _ is  _ his dream to pursue, after all, although Remus does have some concerns about it but will bring them up at a future time, definitely not tonight. 

Tonight, Remus lies in bed next to Sirius and thinks about the day they will have tomorrow, where they will make their long-awaited return to Platform 9 ¾ as something akin to parents instead of stupid kids. Remus sighs contentedly, happy to finally be warm, safe, and stationary.

Then, of course, Sirius’s voice asks: “Moony?”

“Mm?” Remus is half asleep, his eyes low lidded and his pulse slow. “Whassup?”

“I like that you had a little moustache.” Sirius says in a giggling voice. “And I like what you’ve done with your hair, I like it a lot, it’s very sexy, and so was the moustache, but so is stubble, but  _ don’t  _ grow a beard or anything of the sort, that would be too much, okay?”

“What…” Remus rolls over, propping himself up on his elbow and squinting at Sirius, “Are you  _ on  _ about? What time is it?” 

“I can’t stop thinking about you!” 

“Jesus Christ…” 

“I couldn’t think about you much, in Azkaban, you know, so this whole past year I’ve been imagining what you would’ve looked like, I thought maybe you’d gotten fat, which would be fine-”

“Sirius…”

“Or maybe you’d,  _ oh _ , I dunno, become a bit more avant garde with your fashion, which would also be nice, but I show up and you’re just the same except you’ve cut your hair and you have a  _ moustache.  _ Which was an  _ excellent  _ look. Now you look all scruffy.”

“I’m going back to sleep.”

“Wait,” Sirius says, tugging at Remus’s arm, “Talk to me.” Then Remus realizes what’s going on. 

Recently, Remus has woken up in the night because Sirius had been awake: grabbing weakly at Remus’s arm, out of breath, teary eyed and sometimes not even knowing where he was. 

Remus will ask, “Padfoot? Sirius, what’s wrong?” Sirius will be wild eyed, his hair a tangled mess of sweat and darkness around his shoulders, and he will be panting for breath and evidently out of control, staring around their dark bedroom and whispering soundless words. Remus will usually turn on the lights, pull back the covers, try to change the scenery in which Sirius had woken up, give him a glass of water and talk to him the whole time.

Sirius will return. 

But Sirius is afraid of waking up in the haziness of the past, somewhere he is only taken through sleep, and he is trying to avoid that through conversation with Remus. 

“Okay, Pads, what do you want to talk about? My facial hair, or have we worn that out by now?” 

“No, I could talk about that for ages…” Sirius cracks a smile in the darkness. “Do you want to have sex?”

“Really?” Sirius’s expression is open and inviting. And so they try. It’s awkward at first because Remus has more scars than ever, some rather scary looking ones, and they haven’t touched each other like this in over ten years, and then it’s quite awful because Sirius can’t get hard no matter what Remus does to him, and he eventually rolls out of bed and pulls his clothes back on, clearly frustrated and embarrassed. 

“Pads, come on, it’s alright…” Remus is crawling after Sirius in just his pants and nothing else, feeling very desperate now that Sirius had brought up the topic of sex and kissed him with a face full of scratch, mouthed down his neck, palmed him hard, laughed against his skin- stuff like this  _ never  _ gets old with Sirius Black, Sirius who’d had a sex drive of legends, who had gone for four rounds in one night at twenty years old although that might have been the cocaine, but now he’s pulling his clothes back on, shaking his head, trying to laugh it off. 

“Where are you going, Sirius, come on?”

“Haha,” Sirius says uselessly, “It’s been a while.”

“So you’re running away?” Remus feels as though  _ he  _ should be the one finding himself insecure and trying to escape an awkward sex situation. Remus is sure that he  _ has  _ done something like this before. Perhaps Remus is just desperate because he, unlike Sirius, can still get hard and would rather like it if Sirius found a way to deal with the problem in his pants before rushing out the door to go be dramatic; probably moping on the beach and reminiscing on those four incredible, sweaty rounds back to back with only showers and more lines in between back in 1979. 

“I’m not running away.” Sirius says, as he puts his shoes on and continues to make moves related to running away, “This just isn’t working, it’s a bit sad, innit?” He’s still laughing at himself to try to make this any easier, “I thought I might take a walk, if you don’t mind.” 

“Sirius, don’t be thick.” Remus watches Sirius’s face tighten.

“It’s just sort of  _ stupid _ ,” He says, because he’s incapable of saying the word ‘embarrassing’, because Sirius Black has never once found anything to be ashamed of. “I just- I didn’t do any- I mean, in Azkaban, I couldn’t even  _ think  _ about sex. Quite a sexless place. Haha.” It’s not very funny at all. “I just need to warm up to it, but I don’t want to lie here in silence and have you try to toss me, okay, that’s just very weird.” 

“What, shall I put on some Gary Glitter?” Sirius’s facial expression goes very strange. 

“I love you, Moony.” 

“Yes, stupid, I know that. I don’t think I’ve got any of his albums but maybe a single, hmm, what about  _ I Did A Little Boogie Woogie- _ ”

“Shut up, shut up!” Sirius cries, throwing himself back onto the bed with his half tied shoes still on, and he sidles up to a shirtless Remus and kisses him on the lips, then and there, as though they could forego the sex to just makeout with each other. Remus suggests they do that. Sirius agrees. 

It feels a bit as though they’re back in fifth year, just getting to know each other, kissing and some strange touching but being far too afraid of having  _ sex  _ with each other, because they’re best mates who just kiss a bit sometimes, share the same bed, same spit and clothes, you know, casual things that best mates do. 

There is no proper climax. They end up somewhat satisfied and very warm against each other in the dark of the bedroom. 

“I’m sorry,” Sirius confesses as Remus tries to sleep once again. “That I can’t… you know, it’s fucking stupid.”

“Don’t apologize,” Remus mumbles, wishing a little bit that he could just get maybe an  _ hour  _ of sleep even if Sirius doesn’t want to, “It’s okay. I don’t mind. I love you.” Sirius is quiet, after that. He sleeps through the night.

**-**

“I think,” Remus says to a house full of people who are not listening to him, “We’re going to be late.” Neither Harry nor Sirius have seemed to hear him even though they are rushing in and out of the living room where he’s sitting quite comfortably on the sofa, sipping a cup of tea, and watching them lose their minds. 

It’s maybe five minutes later when Sirius seems to process his words and says:

“What? Huh? What?  _ Late?  _ Me,  _ late?  _ While you’re sitting there, on your arse, drinking tea? Tell me about it!” Harry laughs out loud and then asks, clearly in a fair bit of a panic:

“Anyone know where Hedwig’s gone?” Remus does not help the search, mostly because he’s lacking in the ability to fly, and in fact stays right where he is, watching as Harry runs outside and starts shouting the very obscure name of his owl. 

“Neighbors are going to think we’re mad.” Sirius has finally dressed himself appropriately, if appropriate means looking like a gutter punk with ears stretched obscenely wide, and he sinks down onto the sofa next to Remus. 

“Can’t be helped.” Remus makes a noise of protest as Sirius snatches the mug out of his hands, downs the rest of it, and then stands back up again. “Are we finally leaving?” 

“I’ll go ask Harry…” Sirius levitates the mug into the kitchen as he walks in the opposite direction, calling Harry’s name as he pokes his head out the door. Remus hauls himself off of the couch. His body is aching intensely from the recent full moon.

The moons at Hogwarts hadn’t been bad at all. Lonely, yes, but also tame. Remus had downed his Wolfsbane potion diligently and when the transformation came, it had most definitely hurt, as his bones shifted apart and his body tore itself apart, but his wolf form had always been sleepy and subdued. In the morning, his body would knit itself back together, and Remus would be left feeling nauseous, ill, and achy, but nothing like how he feels now.

He could barely move this morning. Cuts and scabs on his scarred skin had ached as he shifted, bones and joints achy with pain, and Remus had done his best to hold back tears that were born simply out of pain. It hasn’t gotten easier, and it never will. 

“Alright, Moony?” Sirius has once again returned, hair windswept from the breeze outside. He touches Remus’s hand, gently, his grey eyes worried and soft. Remus hates when Sirius looks at him like this.

“Fine.”

“You don’t have to come, you know.” 

“I want to.” It’s more than a want to come, it is a need. Remus had daydreamed this day for many years when he was younger. Bringing Harry to Platform 9 ¾, providing him that support that James and Lily had never been able to, and it had all been ruined last year when Remus had gone back, but not in the way he ever thought he would, how he’d been hazy from pain potions and passed out in the same car that Harry and his friends had chosen, only waking up to find a dementor bearing down upon them.

Remus wants to see Harry off and is told that he doesn’t have to, because he has no relation to Harry, and he’s been feeling this odd alienation ever since the school year ended; Sirius and Harry wrote each other constantly while Remus kept up no contact with the boy, Harry had come to live with them and has generally awkward conversations with Remus while he and Sirius laugh together like old friends. Remus is not his father, he had lost that chance and it will never return. 

“Found her!” Harry pants, rushing back into the house with a hooting Hedwig on his arm. “Let’s go, are we late?”

They are not late (they always worry about it but never are), and they break through the barrier at ten fifty eight on the dot. 

“Fuck,” Harry swears, much to Remus’s dismay, “Fuck, we  _ are _ late.”

“We’re not late,” Sirius tells him pacifyingly, “We have two minutes. Shall we say our goodbyes?” Harry turns, then, to look at Sirius with bright eyes. Remus is not expecting a speech and is not rewarded with one. Harry says:

“This has been the best summer of my life, thank you so much for everything,” And then hugs Sirius very tightly, a big smile on his face. He pulls back quickly, grinning at Sirius ruffles his hair in a fatherly gesture, and then looks at Remus with that expression of momentary confusion, as though he cannot think of what else to say.

“Have a good year, Harry,” Remus tells him, “I can only hope they’ve found you a suitable Defense teacher this year.” 

“No one could do it better than you! I’ll write and tell you who we’ve got this year.” The train’s horn blows loudly and Harry jumps in surprise, looking back and forth between Remus and Sirius. “I’d better be going, but I’ll write to you, and maybe see you over the hols,” He speaks as he gets onto the train, leaving the door open as it starts to move, “And best of luck with your job, Sirius, but I know you’ll get it, and good luck too, Remus, if you’re looking for a job, and have a good year  _ too,  _ and- and-  _ bye!”  _

He shouts this last word, hanging out of the door, wind in his hair as the speed picks up, a big sunny grin on his face as he waves to them until they’re all out of sight. Remus takes a deep breath as the train rumbles out of the station. He closes his eyes, takes in the sounds of bustling families, smells the familiar train-station scent of brake dust and oil, and sees the lightness of the platform flickering before his eyes.

“We’re empty nesters, Moony, how does it feel?” Remus opens his eyes to see Sirius wiping tears from his pale cheeks. “Feels bad to me,” He responds to his own question, “Did he say  _ maybe  _ hols? I want to spend Christmas with him!” 

“Well, he might want to spend it with the Weasleys…” Remus trails off as the aforementioned Weasleys appear, seemingly out of nowhere, as loud and friendly as ever.

“Hello, you two!” Molly chirps. “So good to see you again, Sirius!” By all accounts, Molly Weasley is lying straight to Sirius’s face, and she had been known to disapprove of him quite explicitly, as in the past she’d often seen him drunk, unwashed, or else just acting generally insane. The war had not done him well.

“You too, Molly!” Sirius chirps right back, always much too enthusiastic for any given situation, and he beams as she pulls him into a hug. “Looking lovely as always- did you make that dress yourself?” While Molly and Sirius descend into a fashion-related conversation, Arthur shakes Remus’s hand and asks him if he’s looking for work, by any chance. 

Remus tells him yes, feeling very clandestine about the whole encounter, and Arthur nods knowingly and says that he might have a position opening in his department at the Ministry that Remus could fill.

“You’re a brilliant teacher, according to the kids,” Arthur tells him, “It’s a shame about the, well, the  _ news _ , you know, as you would have done well to stay at Hogwarts.” Remus admits that it is regretful. Molly interrupts, then, talking about how wonderful it is that Harry now has a proper set of parents and Remus sees Sirius’s face tighten in this odd way, the same swooping feeling that Remus gets in his stomach when the topic is mentioned, as though both of them will always think of Harry as James’s son. 

“We’d love to have you over for dinner,” Sirius tells her, playing the role of host while Remus will be the one slaving away in the kitchen, “It could be like a housewarming party!”

“Yes!” Molly cheers. “You know what would be  _ really  _ exciting, would be to have the Grangers over as well!”

“Oh,  _ yes _ !” Arthur puts in. “I love hearing about Daniel’s position, he’s a… a tooth doctor?”

“A dentist,” Remus offers, thinking that ‘tooth doctor’ sounds far too much like ‘tooth fairy’ to be considered valid.

“Medieval stuff, I’ll say! What a splendid idea! Say, how about the four of us have a spot of lunch?” Remus does not really want to have a spot of lunch with them, since he still feels weak and nauseous after the moon. It’s always been this way: whether he had assistance from his friends in Animagus forms, a Wolfsbane potion, or nothing at all, he loses his appetite for a week during the good months and forever during the bad ones. 

During his earlier years at Hogwarts, Remus had been nauseated by the overwhelming smells of the Great Hall during mealtimes and had taken to hiding away in the dorms or library during mealtimes, surviving off of crisps and chocolate, and the assorted pastries that Sirius would bring up for him on the nights where he noticed Remus had gone missing. 

He’d lost any weight that there had been to lose and had looked somewhat sickening: emaciated but tall enough for his skin to look stretched thin over his bones. Lily Evans had been the one to ask if he needed help, assuming that he had an eating disorder, and Remus had both been ashamed that he’d deteriorated that far and grateful that she hadn’t put the pieces together related to his lycanthropy.

She’d figured it out in fourth year, anyways. It never took Lily Evans long to pick up on things. 

Remus feels like he’s falling back on old habits that most definitely die hard as he pushes food around on his plate while Molly, Sirius, and Arthur all make conversation. Remus tries, but the offensive smells of food leave him very much nauseous and his hands shake on the table in front of him, so he abandons the food and resorts to shifting about in his chair like a child as the grown-ups talk.

“Thank you so much for looking after Harry,” Sirius is telling the Weasleys, “I wish more than anything that I could have been there for him, and you’ve taken him, and I’m so grateful for it.” His voice is genuine, Remus realizes. 

“Of course.” Molly sounds oddly tender. “He needed a loving family, you know, and he’s such a good friend to Ron. He’s such a lovely boy, Harry is. Very kind, very loving, very  _ humble,  _ you know?”

“Great kid,” Arthur puts in, “Reminds me of his dad.” Sirius doesn’t reply to this. He glances over at Remus, who is busy working down the lump of nausea in his throat. 

“He’s a lot like his dad,” Remus finally says. “A little less big headed, maybe. Harry gets into a fair amount of trouble, though, but Sirius and James set the record for most amount of detentions, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, we did.” Sirius smiles.

“I think Fred and George could stand to compete,” Arthur tells them rather proudly. “You should compare, I’m sure they would enjoy that.” Sirius’s smile turns genuine. 

“I would love to discuss it with them! You know, with all the time Harry’s spent at yours, we would always be happy to have Ron over at ours, as well.” Molly looks as though this is the worst idea she’s ever heard, but still bites a smile at Sirius, who beams back at her. 

“So, Sirius,” Arthur begins, apparently picking up a new topic of conversation as Molly doesn’t seem keen on making future plans regarding leaving Ron in Sirius’s company, “What’s your Quidditch team? The Cannons have been doing poorly this season, but it’s to be expected since their captain…” Remus finds this even more nauseating than thinking about James, and stares down at his plate, debating Apparating away. God, he wishes a hole in the ground would open up, swallow him, and spit him up back in Cornwall. Jesus, if only...

There’s a very loud CRACK in the air and Remus stares around for about five seconds, realizing that he’s sitting on the warm, soft sofa in their living room and that he  _ had  _ Apparated away just by wishing it so deeply. He sits and laughs out loud for about ten minutes, in on and off hysterics, until Sirius reappears, red faced and clearly embarrassed about the whole situation, but he starts laughing just as hard when he sees Remus. 

“I can never show my face to them again!” Remus wails, covering his face with both hands as Sirius drags him down onto the sofa.

“I cannot  _ wait  _ for our housewarming party!” 


	6. Take the Light and Run

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shit starts to get kinda heavy, so here's a content warning for depression & some dark thoughts

_ Harry Potter _

_ Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry _

_ September 5th, 1994 _

_ Sirius Black _

_ 24 Sunny Corner Lane  _

_ Penzance, County Cornwall  _

_ Dear Sirius, _

_ First day(s) went all okay, I got sorted into Gryffindor (ha ha), and now, fast forward to fourth year, they are holding the TRIWIZARD TOURNAMENT here at Hogwarts. The Triwizard Tournament!!!! I’m not old enough to compete (so they say) but it’s just some very exciting news.  _

_ Tell Remus that our new Defense professor is named Alastor Moody. I feel like Remus mentioned him while talking to me once, said he was the Head of the Aurors (retired, now, I guess) and that he was amazing, but he honestly seems quite scary to me. I guess we’ll see how his class is. _

_ Also, Mrs. Weasley sent Ron a letter in which she apparently had a very worrisome lunch with you two after dropping me off at Kings’ Cross (????). Said that you looked like something out of a ‘grotesque nightmare, with ears like octopus tentacles’ and that Remus seemed ‘incredibly depressed, to a catatonic level’ and then he literally Apprated away in the middle of a conversation. Honestly very curious about what happened!  _

_ She’s now worried about my safety staying with you, though I’m not worried, so you shouldn’t be either, it was just a bit weird to hear about you through her letter to Ron. Maybe don’t have any more lunches with her? Just my two cents, I suppose.  _

_ Anyways, there’s not much else to tell. Classes aren’t very exciting so far, but I’m just waiting for October & the start of the tournament! Life will most definitely pick up then.  _

_ Harry _

Sirius had found Harry’s letter intensely funny and read Molly’s direct quotes out loud to Remus over and over until he’d been told to stop. Remus doesn’t find it funny that he comes off as ‘incredibly depressed’ to Molly, since he’s not  _ depressed,  _ he’s just a werewolf, although there is a very fine line between the two sometimes, and today Remus is feeling more on the depressed end of spectrum since his aches have stopped but he’s decided to research the price of Wolfsbane and it had made his head spin a little bit.

“Ahh, good old Molly. So you think we should cancel the dinner party?” Remus rubs at his temples, thinking that he will manifest a migraine if they have to talk about the Weasleys anymore. 

“I don’t care, honestly, Sirius, you’re in charge.” 

“Alright, fine!” Sirius has put on a Clash record while he does the washing up (the Muggle way, because he finds it therapeutic), and the sounds of Sirius singing Rock the Casbah at the top of his lungs is beginning to grate on Remus. “Moony, do you know what?”

“What?”

“ _ ROCK the Casbah- ROCK-  _ I think, haha,” Sirius is breathless, turning around, his back against the sink as he turns to look at Remus sitting at the dinner table with his head in his hands, “That we should get a dog.”

“I’m going to be sick,” Remus tells him rather plainly. “I can’t stand this music.” 

“Are you in a  _ mood,  _ Remus, are you in a  _ bad _ mood?” Remus stands up, feeling very tense and rather angry for no good reason at all. “You are, aren’t you?” 

“No need to be so fucking delighted about it,” He spits, seeing Sirius’s face fall in one smooth motion. “I’m going to bed.” Remus storms down the hall and into the room, collapsing onto the bed, feeling a familiar heaviness on his chest. He  _ is  _ depressed, maybe, he’ll admit it, but he doesn’t like Molly Weasley writing to her sons about it. 

The loud punk music in the living room stops playing, and the silence seems to echo around the house. A few moments later, footsteps down the hall and Sirius pushes the door to their room open, his expression much less easygoing than before.

“Sorry, Moony, I didn’t realize you were serious.”

“It’s fine.” Remus mumbles. He sits up from his pathetic lying-down position and looks at Sirius, who looks right back. “I’m not feeling well.”

“Oh. Sorry. Do you need some pain potions, or something?” Remus shakes his head. Not that kind of illness. Sirius seems to understand. “Is this about Molly?”

“I don’t really want to talk about Molly anymore, I’m over Molly, I don’t need her judging me, it was stupid, it was a stupid day, can we forget about it?”

“Yeah, of course.” Sirius sits down at the edge of the bed, clearly a bit anxious. “Do you want to get a proper dog?” 

“Yes.” 

“Brill.” Sirius looks down at his hands and picks at his cuticles. 

“Come here, Pads.” Sirius cracks half of a smile and moves up the bed as Remus wraps an arm around him. Instead of feeling happy with the affection of having a cuddle with Sirius, Remus now feels even more sad, like this blanket of aching sadness weighing down upon him. Remus feels like crying, is even aware of the tears choking up his throat, and hugs Sirius tighter. 

“Shall we go tomorrow, then? 

“What?” Remus asks in a cracked voice. 

“To get a dog. I need to write Hagrid, too, about my motorbike. And I need a job. I think you do, too.” Remus doesn’t reply because he thinks he’ll start crying if he tries. “Moony?”

“That’s fine.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m sad.”

“Oh.” Sirius shifts position in Remus’s arms, making himself more comfortable. “Do you want to smoke a joint?”

“I don’t want to get up.”

“You can smoke a joint in bed, Moony, that's never stopped anyone.” 

“I want to go to sleep.” Sirius does not push the topic. He can be very gentle, when it comes down to it. When they were younger, Sirius had always been very kind when it came to Remus’s illnesses, mental and physical alike. There were the fun tasks: rolling joints for him, setting off on chocolate-buying expeditions, making tea, fluffing the pillows, and the endlessly less fun ones like cleaning his wounds, finding him buckets to be sick in, staying up all night to be there for Remus as he fell apart. 

How many times have they performed these familiar motions? 

Remus always falls asleep quickly, eager to escape to a different place, a darker one with no light or no thoughts and just dreams. He doesn’t know what Sirius does as he stays awake, what he’s done for years and continues to. 

The warmth of their bodies together, the bedsheets, Sirius watching him with love and yearning. Remus’s breaths will be slow, and Sirius’s will match his. It will be dark, but Sirius memorized Remus’s face, the lines of it, the cut of his cheekbones, and the scars: across his nose, his cheek, his eyebrow, his jaw. Raised white lines sliced deep into his skin. Sirius will take in the dark bags under his eyes, the reddish stubble on his face, everything about him that Sirius had fallen in love with.

Sirius will curl up next to him, close as he can be, and then he’ll fall asleep only hoping that he’s taken to a better place in his dreams. 

**-**

Remus wakes up and the space where Sirius should be is cold. It is such a small thing to notice, but for someone as depressed as Remus has been, it’s a bad start to the day already. He had been planning on getting up but feels a gravitational pull back towards his bed. Where is Sirius? Remus would like to find him but can’t, once again, just can’t.

_ You need to get up,  _ he thinks, but he is paralyzed.  _ You need to get up, Remus, you need to sit up and then stand up and then find Sirius. We were going to get a dog today. To get a dog, the first step is to get up. Step one is sitting up. You can sit up, can’t you? _

Remus does not sit up. He lays in bed for a long time, long enough for Sirius to come looking for him.  __

“Moony?” His voice is hesitant. Remus cannot even summon the energy to roll over in bed. He is embarrassed but spiraling, feels as though there is nothing for him left to do in life: no job, no goals, just living here with Sirius and doing  _ nothing  _ for the rest of his life,  _ nothing-  _ what a failure he’s become. “Moony, are you awake? It’s nearly two.”

“I’m awake.” Remus croaks. 

“What’s going on, love, still have a headache?” Remus closes his eyes. “Reeeeemus.” Finally, Remus pushes himself up. It is intensely exhausting, and his lungs sting as he hunches over, in a sitting position but barely. His lungs are doing this crunchy thing they’ve been doing since he’s a teenager; some days he wakes up and he feels as though his lungs are two paper bags and they are crinkling and tearing a little more every day.

It’s what he gets for taking up smoking at thirteen years old; it’s just another way that things are difficult.

“Sorry,” Remus wheezes, “I’m sorry.”

“I sort of made breakfast.” That explains why Sirius wasn’t there upon waking up. “I suppose it’s lunch, now, though. Are you up for a trip to London?”

“Erm…” Remus scratches his head and feels the familiar tight aching in his chest that comes with what he’s fucking done to his lungs, jesus  _ christ,  _ what’s wrong with him? “I’m feeling really awful.” Sirius is leaning against the doorway. He’s shaved a bit, still stubble on his face but better groomed, and he looks ready for a day in the city. “You can go without me.” 

“Nah,” Sirius says, “It’s okay, I’ll wait. Do you need anything?” Remus shakes his head. “How about you come have some food? And you can have a shower, and we can take a walk.” Remus shakes his head again. “Okay, I’ll bring you something to eat, and we’ll go from there.” Sirius walks off down the hall. Remus stretches widely, cracking his back, arms, neck, and knuckles. He slides out of bed, pulls on some dirty clothes that he’s left on the floor, and moves out of the dark bedroom. Their house is filled with light, but the brightness makes Remus feel weak, and he sits down heavily at the table once arriving in the kitchen. 

“Hello!” Sirius cheers, beaming at him. “I’ve put leftovers in the fridge, I made a full English, but you might want something lighter, maybe?”

“Erm… toast?”

“Sounds good.” Sirius returns with toast, jam, butter, and a large mug of tea for Remus. He smiles at him as he puts the food on the table, and picks up an anxious ramble as Remus puts off eating by smearing assorted condiments on pieces of toast. “So, I was thinking we’d just go to an animal shelter, since I want to help someone who needs it, you know, not just  _ buying  _ a dog, but adopting one. Buying is bad, isn’t it?”

“Mhm.”

“Well, anyways, I wrote to Hagrid and he’s going to meet me tomorrow to get my motorbike back! Isn’t that exciting? He’s kept it all these years, god love him, and he’s got it in storage. You’ll be okay if I go visit him tomorrow?”

“For sure.” 

“And then I’ve got to stop by the Ministry, to apply for some jobs, and I know you’re at odds with the Weasleys, but Arthur said he had some work for you, so you might want to write to him.”

“Yeah.”

“And,” Sirius continues, “Do you think you might want to get, like, help?” Remus finally looks up at him. “Like, professional help?” Remus takes a sip of the tea. It’s very strong, thankfully, and Remus strongly considers pulling himself together because this is most definitely not a conversation he wants to have. 

“Er, you know, it’s like a fine… idea.”

“Because you go through these, I dunno,  _ phases,  _ where I’m worried about you. Like, properly worried. Because you’re…” Sirius trails. “You’re not well, Remus. I know there’s like, what do you lot call it, ugh, they’re like healers for your mind-”

“Therapists.”

“Yes! Therapists! There’s wizarding therapists!” Remus finally takes a bite out of a piece of toast and is unsurprised to find it tasting exactly like cardboard with a similar consistency. “We’ve all had a rough go of things, and I-I remember you went through this at Hogwarts, too, it’s not really changed, it seems like it’s  _ worse,  _ now, and you were okay in Trinidad, but now you seem in a bad way, and I love you and so I’d like to help.” Remus chews up the entire slice of toast before replying.

“I’ll think about it, okay? I’m going to have a shower.” He leaves his tea and the rest of the toast on the table. When he returns, it’s all still there, but Sirius is gone. The tea has gone cold. The house is bright with afternoon light. Remus looks out the window, and Sirius is outside, setting up a sun umbrella with a beach chair underneath it. The other man does not notice Remus watching him. Remus goes back to their dark bedroom, and falls asleep for the rest of the day. 

**-**

Remus has made some progress by the end of the week. Saturday, when Sirius had gone to see Hagrid, had started off rather bleak as Remus had spent the whole entire day lying in bed until Sirius had returned encompassed by the sound of a familiar roar, and then forced Remus to take a ride with him on the bike. 

Remus would never admit it, but he’s always loved flying on Sirius’s motorbike. It makes him feel like someone’s pasted him into a children’s fairytale. A punk ex-con and a werewolf ex-professor tearing through the stars on a big black motorbike. Remus wraps his arms tighter around Sirius’s middle, the heavy softness of his worn leather jacket smelling as it’s always smelled, like alcohol and cigarettes and the spicy cologne Sirius used in his youth. 

Sirius takes a wild dive and Remus laughs out loud as the rainy wind streaks across his face. There’s a wild swooping feeling in his stomach as they hurtle towards the ground, but Sirius pulls the bike up in a motion very familiar and smooth. Sirius is laughing, too, and his wild hair is flying in Remus’s face, and the adrenaline, and the moon as a halfway sliver in the sky, and the fearlessness mixed with the smell of motor oil.

It’s being enveloped by the world of Sirius Black. It’s a world that Remus had tried to forget about, but had come back to him in small ways, like dating a girl with great hair and punk fashion and a wicked sense of humor. Sam hadn’t ridden a motorbike, at least, Sam had driven a very shitty Renault that had four doors but required any backseat passengers to sit with their legs crossed for the lack of space.

Remus had always sat with his feet on the dashboard and knees bent because he’d been too tall. But there’s always been room for him on the back of a motorbike. 

They try sex again after getting home that night, and are once again unsuccessful. They are both windswept from the bike ride and buzzing with youthful energy, Remus feeling more lively than he has in a long time, and they tangle up in bed in this familiar way, kissing, touching, Remus a little more aggressive, palming Sirius through his tight jeans.

Sirius, once again, doesn’t seem able to get hard, and he gives as good as he’d like to get, since he’s always been what Remus would determine an oral expert, but after Remus has been satisfied, he finds himself unable to return the favor.

“I could fuck you,” Remus offers, “You know. But I guess you wouldn’t… come?” Sirius is once again red faced and glaring down at the sheets underneath them as though staring at them long enough will fix the issues at hand. 

“Whatever,” He says grouchily, “This is just typical. Of course. Of course this would happen. The one thing I had going for me was my incredible sexual stamina-”

“You had much more than that going for you-”

“And now you can’t even get a rise out of me. And you’re sexier than ever!” Remus just sighs in response to that. “Blast…” Sirius stands up, pushing his hands through his hair, and glancing back towards the bed where Remus is sitting. Remus fixes him there, right there. 

Before Azkaban, Sirius’s hair had been incredibly thick, dark, and long. He’d worn it long past his shoulders, and it fell in perfect waves down around past neck. Remus’s favorite activities had mostly involved Sirius’s hair: combing his hands through it, braiding it,  _ brushing  _ it, christ, Remus had been completely fixated on it. 

Azkaban had thinned his hair out to an extent, and there’s a few streaks of premature grey in the black that had once been inky and dark and is now lighter, browner, less vibrant. Sirius had cut it shorter in between when Remus had seen him at Hogwarts and his subsequent moving in, now it just brushes his shoulders. He is just wearing his boxers, at the moment, and his tattooed body is still scrawny. Remus gazes at the blackwork tattoos, strange alchemical symbols and runes, and the prison number inked into his bicep. 

“I’ll work on it,” Sirius tells him. “I’ll practice. I’ll dedicate an hour a day to try getting warmed up.”

“You know it doesn’t make a difference to me.”

“It does to me, Moony.”

**-**

It takes Remus a week to work up the courage to make their trip to London. It’s strange, he thinks, the way he’s let his depression turn him into a hermit when he spent the whole previous year waking up early every morning to go teach class after class of teenagers, grade their papers, spend extra hours talking them through confusing concepts and listening to them rant about their problems. All of this while being a werewolf, working with his childhood nemesis, and, apparently, suffering from severe depression.

“I think you just need something to do,” Sirius says when Remus shares his thoughts over breakfast. “You had plenty to do last year- you were a professor! There was always something to do! Now, you’re free. It’s like summer depression, you know, I remember how you would get.” Remus remembers, too.

The summer after his mum died, the summer Sirius had run away from Grimmauld for good, the summer that they’d properly gotten together. Sirius had come to visit Remus in his tiny council house in Wrexham. Remus had spent weeks wasting away in bed, only eating when his dad remembered that he was alive and came up to shout at him for not knowing how to take care of himself, then forcing him to eat dinner downstairs with him. 

Sirius had shown up, bright eyed and grinning sharply. He’d put on Remus’s once treasured records that had now been left to collect dust, forced Remus to dance with him, bought himself a skateboard in town and taught himself how to ride it, he’d entertained Remus’s dad with quick and lively conversation, he’d brought life with him and he had fixed things. 

It seemed like Sirius had left the darkness of his home behind. He had taken the light and ran with it. 

“We’ll find you a job.” Sirius sounds very assured. “We’re going to have a great day! I’ve heard from some sources that Kingsley  _ Shacklebolt _ is working in the Auror department! Do you think he could get me in?” Remus remembers Kingsley quite well from Hogwarts. He’d been a Hufflepuff, a Quidditch player, but a competent one who Remus and Lily would study with sometimes.

“Do you really think being an Auror is the best plan for you?” Sirius had been sitting on the kitchen counter and drinking tea with his big boots on, swinging his legs and kicking softly at the counter, and they still now. He looks at Remus over his mug. Remus is sitting at the kitchen table, glancing down at Sirius’s assorted applications, and now looks back up at him.

“What,” Sirius begins, “Have you got a problem with it?” Oh, he’s being defensive about it. 

“No, no. I’m just worried about you, and being an Auror, and… I dunno, Padfoot, I’m not the only one who might need help.” Sirius raises one tactful eyebrow. “I  _ mean,  _ like, you’ve still got nightmares, Sirius.” Remus speaks slowly but purposefully. “And flashbacks, to Azkaban, or to the war. Being an Auror is going to take you right back to the fighting.” Sirius sits perfectly still. Remus knows that he’s touched a nerve whenever Sirius isn’t moving. Movement is his natural state, and Remus had imagined him many times in his cell at Azkaban, pacing back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. Back and forth for twelve years.

“Okay, Moony.”

“I don’t mean anything rude by it.”

“I think you’re right.” Sirius’s voice is quiet. “Bet you love to hear that,” He grins, only briefly, “But you  _ are _ right.” Remus does love to hear that he’s right, in some twisted and evil sort of way. He sips his tea. “I’ve a proposition for you.”

“Mhm?”

Sirius leans forward on the counter, rather conspiratorially. “ _ I’ll _ go see a mind healer if you do too.”

“Therapist.” Remus corrects him automatically. He then realizes that Sirius has done something completely diabolical and in character, making Remus agree to do something good for himself just because he cares about Sirius. “I’m- I’m just not sure.”

“What, like you think  _ I _ want to sit and whine to someone about all my past traumas?”

“I don’t think that’s the best way to frame it-”

“But that’s how you feel about it, don’t you?” Remus doesn’t reply. “Remus, you don’t have any coping mechanisms. You get sad and then you lie in bed for weeks. What would you have done if I weren’t here?” He’s right, again, he’s often right. Remus finishes his tea and stares into the dregs at the bottom. 

“Okay,” He says quietly. “I’ll go. But you’ve got to, too. Stick to your word.”

“Sure thing.” Sirius smiles gently. 

**-**

They arrive by motorbike in London and Remus remembers why both of them had agreed to never live there. The city is loud, dirty, smelly, and altogether quite sickening.

“Not as bad as New York,” Sirius tells him importantly.

“You’ve never been!”

“I’ve manifested myself there, many times. Rats, Remus, rats  _ everywhere.  _ Living nightmare.” Neither of them mention the one and only most important rat in their life by the name of Peter Pettigrew.

They stop by the Ministry, first. Sirius puts in applications to assorted jobs, though they stay away from the Auror office. Most of his applications are to the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes, which Remus thought he was joking about but it doesn’t appear that way at all. Remus slinks into the Department for Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. His speciality has always been a mixture of defensive magic and magical creatures, and he puts in applications for the Being and Spirit Divisions, as well as the Ghoul Task force. 

The attendant at the desk keeps her eyes on Remus as he fills out assorted forms, and when he gives them to her, she turns her nose up at him.

“Don’t think you should be looking at the Werewolf Registry, first?” Remus feels his face redden. He doesn’t reply, just drops the papers on her desk, and turns his back on her. He had not known that the news of his lycanthrophy had carried so far from Hogwarts.

Outside in the hall, Sirius is standing and talking animatedly to a man much taller than him, a man who Remus recognizes right away. Kingsley Shacklebolt has always been a powerful figure, even as a teenager, but his eyes are warm when he shakes Remus’s hand.

“Good to see you, Remus.” 

“You too, Kingsley, how have you been?”

“Very well, thank you. Going for the corporate life, you two?” Remus and Sirius look at each other. Kingsley laughs. “Only joking. Good luck with your jobs, though! I’ve got to get back, but I hope to see you around!” Sirius and Remus bid him goodbye and walk down the hall to the lift. 

“How was it?” Sirius asks. Remus shrugs. He’s still hot from embarrassment at what the receptionist had said to him. Now that everyone knows him as an unregistered werewolf, there’s no way he’ll be able to find work. Remus doesn’t want to talk to Sirius about it.

“Can we get our dog and then just go home? I don’t want to be here.”

“Okay.” Sirius casts him a worried look but doesn’t push any farther. The jerky motions of the lift and the crowded space make Remus feel claustrophobic and ill, and it’s grey skied and raining in London. Remus cannot breathe enough. He misses home. Sirius walks, talks, moves through the city streets and Remus feels trapped by the buildings on all sides, the grey and brown of the city, the people all around them, faces turned down against the light drizzle. They are all strangers, and Remus feels sick.

“Sirius,” He says, pulling on the sleeve of his leather jacket and moving to the edge of the sidewalk. “I can’t be here.” Sirius looks concerned. “You can go get the dog, okay? Get the cutest one there, alright, I’ve got to go home.”

“Remus-”

“I hate the fucking city.” Remus swears. “I fucking  _ hate  _ London. I’ll see you at home.” He walks back down the street, not looking back to see if Sirius is following. Remus ducks down an alleyway, feeling as though there is a heavy pressure on his chest, and then Apparates away. Pressure, even greater pressure as the queer feeling of Apparition overtakes him, and he is home on the coast, in the quiet, with a light cloud layer and he still feels like killing himself. 

Their bedroom always has the curtains drawn, these days. Remus takes his shoes off in the darkness, lays down in bed, and cries in the echoing silence of an empty home. 


	7. Werewolves of London

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey, happy almost-halloween! previous cw still stands, this chapter is pretty bleak & depressing.

**_WEREWOLF REGISTRY_ **

_ DATE OF REGISTRATION:  _ 15/10/1994

_ IDENTIFICATION NUMBER: 20168 _

_ IDENTIFYING INFORMATION (HUMAN AND WOLF CONDITIONS) _

_ HUMAN FORM _

FAMILY NAME: Lupin  FIRST NAME: Remus, John

DATE OF BIRTH: 10/3/1960 GENDER: **Male** /Female

HEIGHT: 6’2”  WEIGHT: 150 EYES: Hazel  HAIR: Light brown

IDENTIFYING FEATURES: Two scars across nose, scar through left eyebrow, scar across right cheek, scar over left side of jaw, walks with a limp, tattoo of a dog on upper right arm. Werewolf bite is located on the right shoulder.

_ WOLF FORM _

HEIGHT: 91 cm WEIGHT: 123 HAIR: Brown/grey

AGE BITTEN: 5  BITTEN BY (If identified): Fenrir Greyback

LOCATION OF INCIDENT: Country: Wales, U.K.  City: Bridgend

_ LOCATION _

PLACE OF BIRTH: Country: Wales, U.K.  City: Cardiff

CURRENT ADDRESS: 24 Sunny Corner Lane, County Cornwall, England

_ By signing this document, I consent to the following conditions: _

  * _I will arrive at the Ministry of Magic at 5 o’clock p.m. on the day of the full moon every month._


  * I will be in a solitary cell for the duration of the transformation.


  * I will be appropriately restrained by Ministry officials.


  * I will be allowed to leave at 9 o’clock the following morning, no earlier. There are no excuses for leaving the Ministry earlier than 9. 


  * If I do not arrive at the Ministry on the day of the full moon, I will be considered a criminal for breaking conditions of the Registry. Aurors and Ministry officials will conduct a subsequent investigation.


  * I will be sentenced to a prison term if I do not engage in contact with the Ministry within 24 hours of missing a full moon.


  * I will update my address with the Registry if I move location.



_SIGNATURE:_ Remus John Lupin DATED: 15/10/1994

“Looks good, looks good…” The worker for the Werewolf Registry Office, a scruffy looking fellow who smells strongly of his own body odor, flips through Remus’s report. “Hazel eyes, have you really? Let me take a look?” Remus had been sitting on the exam table and now tilts his head up very warily as the other man squints into his eyes. “They look brown to me.”

“They change,” Remus grumbles shortly. 

“No need to be cross about it!” Remus shifts anxiously on the table, looking down at his obscenely scarred forearms. “Let’s see that tattoo, then?” Remus had been forced to take off his shirt for the man to examine the heavily scarred bite on his shoulder, and is now just wearing a t-shirt. He bares his arm to the Ministry worker, who says “Aha!” upon spotting the home done tattoo on Remus’s arm. “Cool, mate. I’ve always wanted a tattoo, or something, but I thought it wouldn’t suit well for work. Suppose I was wrong, then, look at you, tattooed and getting a job!” Remus has one tattoo and is only in this situation because the Magical Creatures Department forced him to register himself if he wanted to work within the Ministry. 

“Are we done, have I finished?”

“No, just one thing left, mate.” Remus sits still on the table as the man moves across the room. It’s rather like any ordinary doctor’s office. There are signs posted up about staying safe from Dragon Pox, what to do if you come down with Mumblemumps, and how to properly quarantine a loved one with Spattergroit.

The Ministry worker has returned with his wand bared in one hand. “Might hurt a bit,” He says, “But nothing you’re not used to, eh?” 

“Sorry, but what are you doing?” The man looks up at him in confusion. 

“Oh, I reckon it didn’t say on the form. It’s just evidence to show that you’ve been registered. Another sort of tattoo. I’ll cast a spell, and it imprints a bit of silver, this sort of device we’ve got, and so we know if you’re human or wolf, alive or dead. And you get a number.”

“A number.”

“Your ID number, right? 20168, you’ll need to remember that, mate. Okay. Shirt off again, I’ll be putting it on your ribs so it’s not quite obvious, okay?” Remus hesitates. The worker is standing in front of him, wand in his hand, clearly eager to get this over and done with, but Remus does not want a permanent number on his skin, five little numbers identifying him as a dark creature forever. It’s worse than the scars marring his skin. Remus swallows hard. 

“This is necessary, is it?”

“‘Fraid so.” Remus swallows again. He pulls his shirt off and keeps it balled up in his lap as the worker pokes a spot on his ribs. Remus sits up very straight as the man presses the tip of his wand against his ribs. Goosebumps prickle over his skin. Remus closes his eyes, listens to the man recite a spell, and then feels a stinging ache fill up his ribs, almost as though the worker has driven a knife into him. 

It feels like a bee sting at first, innocent and fine, but the pain deepens and worsens nearly right away, and Remus gasps out loud as he’s rendered breathless by the pain.

“Alright, mate?” The worker asks. “Won’t last but a minute.” Remus clenches his t-shirt tight with both hands and closes his eyes as the pain comes in waves of breathless horror, and finally, seems to recede. “There we go… You can put your shirt back on, now, I’ve finished.” Remus puts his shirt back on, then his jumper, and then his coat, and tries to forget about the aching sting on his ribs and the shame that comes with registering himself, like an animal, like something unworthy of equal treatment. He does not want to ever look at the number etched into his ribs.

“Alright,” The worker says, “Next moon is…”

“The nineteenth,” Remus spits. “I’ll be here.” He limps out of the office and down the hall, feeling weak and ill, embarrassed and disgusting, and bad all over. They are having a dinner party tonight, and Remus thinks he’d rather off himself than go back home, but it is pouring down rain in London and Remus stands and gets drenched. He feels sick, ill, awful, at odds with himself. He wants to die. He does not want this anymore.

**-**

They cancel the dinner party in October and never reschedule. 

Life picks up and worsens at the same time. They have a dog, now, and they name him Joey Ramone and he’s a German Shepherd with enough trauma to rival his owners’, and he used to hide whenever either of them came home, scattering from the door and stuffing his too-big body under their bed. Remus could relate. Joey learns to trust them and Remus takes some small form of inspiration from him.

Remus gets a job, and Sirius does too, though neither of them are happy about it. 

Sirius works with the Accidental Magical Reversal Squad and has more fun than Remus does, going on outings, coming home with fun stories to tell at the dinner table while Remus is confined to a cubicle in the Office of Misinformation. The suicidality wanes, and the depression remains. Therapy helps, slightly, and things get better but they get better so very slowly. 

On Halloween, Remus can’t get out of bed, and so they have a fight. 

“I can’t,” Sirius says, “I can’t deal with this. It’s our first Halloween back together,  _ properly,  _ we have each other, and you can’t be there for me, you can’t even  _ try!”  _ He’s shouting while Remus is curled up in bed, crying, and they make an incredibly pathetic sight. “And if I tried to go, to go see Kingsley or the Weasleys or  _ anyone,  _ I’d just feel guilty for leaving you here in case you decide to fucking off yourself!” Remus doesn’t reply, just sobs into his pillow, and Sirius spits “ _ Fuck _ ! Fuck this, fuck you,” and he leaves and when he comes home, he’s drunk.

Staggers into the house, loud and rowdy, kicking off his boots in the entryway loud enough for Remus to hear them thunk as he throws them onto the floor. Remus listens to him slur his words while talking to Joey, and then he hears him stomp down the hallway like some big drunken shadow, and he throws open the door and Remus flinches in bed, wary and hating this, feeling as though he’s been dragged backwards through time. 

Sirius crashes into bed. He smells sharp and dirty, and Remus chokes on it. 

They lie next to each other, not touching, perfectly miserable, and Remus thinks  _ This is my fault  _ and Remus thinks  _ If I had been stronger, this wouldn’t have happened  _ and Remus thinks  _ This was always going to happen,  _ and Remus realizes that if he wanted to escape, there would be nowhere to go. Remus thinks that if James and Lily could see them now, they would be disgusted. 

**-**

Remus takes a few days away.

His first stop, on the morning of November 1st, is St. Mungo’s Hospital, because him and Sirius remember James and Lily like they’ve just pulled the scab off of a fresh wound while Alice and Frank are still  _ alive,  _ and maybe just barely, and maybe you can’t really call it living if you’re being honest about it, but Remus hasn’t seen them since 1982 and feels guilty.

Frank doesn’t remember him, and neither does Alice, and they both look so much older than they should. They are not the same people that Remus once knew, but these skeletons wear their faces and so Remus talks to them anyways, pretending he hasn’t run away from home, running from his responsibilities and dreading the upcoming moon, thinking about suicide most days if not all of them.

He talks to Frank and Alice for hours. Neither of them respond to him with words, but something in their gestures and actions tell him that they’ve heard him either way.

“I know your son,” He explains, “Neville. He’s in Gryffindor, just like you. I taught him. I was a professor, at Hogwarts, last year. Defense. Post is still cursed, since I only lasted a year… Neville, though, oh, you would be so proud of him. He’s a bit… I dunno, ha, he’s a bit forgetful, a bit timid. Hard worker, though. He’s a good lad. You’d be so proud of him.” No one responds to him. 

Alice reaches out and touches his arm. Remus looks up at her, and she looks at him. There is something wild and fearful in her eyes, and for a moment, Remus sees the consciousness there, the Alice he once knew, and he holds her hand very tightly. The look passes, and Alice’s deep brown eyes turn dark and hazy again.

“I’m sorry I didn’t come earlier.” Remus looks over at Frank, who is braiding the edges of a blanket. “I miss you two.” Frank mumbles something unintelligible. Remus tears his hands through his hair and is grateful for when the nurse comes and tells him that visiting hours are over. 

London is bleak and dirty; the sky a heavy grey that bears down upon Remus and makes him want to tear out his own heart. He is so incredibly depressed. The streets blur as he walks through them. His bad leg aches and he begins to limp after half a mile, and the London streets aren’t happy at all; they’re awful, evil, closing in. Remus closes his eyes and chokes back a sob as he Apparates away. He gasps out loud as he reappears in Wales and is given the air back in his lungs.

The sky is very big in Wales. Remus is in a field on the outskirts of Wrexham, and his shoes are soaked from squishy mud underneath them, and he has to wade through a glade of wheat dripping wet from the cold rain that pours down from the heavens. The world is painted in muted shades of beige, grey, brown. The sky stretches on for miles and miles. As a boy, Remus would look up at it and feel as though he was falling backwards, his chest stretching up, being abducted by some great other force to take him away into the clouds.

Remus is soaking wet and feels waterlogged as he squelches down the street where he grew up. There is water in his shoes, dripping from his hair, and he knows if he wrung out his jacket, a whole river would flow from it. He knocks loudly at the door to his house, wondering when he’s become a stranger in his own hometown. It takes a good long while for his dad to come to the door. Lyall opens it and immediately frowns upon the sight of his son.

“Dad.” Remus says.

“Remus.” Lyall’s hair is a steel grey, his face etched with deep lines, and he wears glasses now, moving them down his nose to get a better look at Remus. “Jesus fucking Christ, son, where’ve you been? Out swimming? Come in, then,  _ shite,  _ didn’t I teach you any magic?” Lyall casts a drying charm on him as he steps inside the house. There is no entryway or parlor- Remus is in the living room as soon as he steps through the front door. 

“Been a few years, hasn’t it, eh? Here for a cuppa, then?”

“Please,” Remus rasps. “I’m sorry for just turning up out of nowhere, you know, life’s been a bit strange recently, but-”

“Take your shoes off, for Christ’s sake, they’re covered in fucking mud.” 

“-Sirius is back,” Remus says as he takes off his shoes and then coat, “He’s back, and we’re living together again.” He pads into the kitchen in his socked feet, nodding a thanks at his dad as he’s handed a cup of tea.

“I know he’s back, I saw all the headlines. Sit down, don’t  _ hover,  _ Remus. Christ.” Remus sits down gingerly at the table, favoring his left leg heavily. “They cleared his name, yeah?” Remus nods. “Always liked the bloke, to be honest with you. Where’s he now?” Lyall had met Sirius a few times, and taken the fact that Remus and him had been dating with a grain of salt, preferring not to acknowledge that the two of them were in a relationship.

“He’s at home, I guess. We’ve had a fight.” Lyall scoffs. 

“And here I suppose you’re moving in with me?”

“God, no.” Remus and his dad laugh at that. “No, he was just… drunk. On Halloween.” Lyall knows what both of those things mean without any explanation. Remus had only explained the unfortunate downfalls of his life to his father on two separate occasions. 

The first had been when Remus had turned up on his dad’s doorstep in 1981, sobbing, in the midst of a rather embarrassing breakdown. He, James, and Sirius had all had some unfortunate sort of disagreement where Remus hadn’t been made a secret keeper and had then been accused of a great number of things, first and foremost of being a liar and a traitor.

Remus had been struggling for words around all the hysterical tears, essentially bawling, saying: “They don’t trust me, they said they  _ loved  _ me, they-they said it didn’t  _ matter,  _ they don’t trust me because I’m a  _ werewolf _ !” And descended into a sobbing, hiccupping mess of tears while Lyall had sworn at him and made tea. Times have not changed much.

“Still a drunk, is he? Shame on you for moving in with him.”

“He’s not a drunk, dad, he used to be. He’s just…  _ now  _ he’s just, he told me he’d stay away from it.”

“Away from fucking what?”

“Drinking, jesus. And it was Halloween, and he got angry with me…”

“So it’s your fault?”

“I… fuck,  _ thanks _ , dad, I’ve been sort of depressed lately. Or, really depressed, maybe. Whatever.” Lyall looks at him disbelievingly. “I just couldn’t really get out of bed, that day, because it’s  _ Halloween,  _ what was I supposed to do? And he got angry with me, went out and got drunk, came back, and then I left.” Lyall gulps down his tea and shrugs.

“I’d be angry with you too. Have you got a job?” Remus nods, tells him his position, and his dad still looks disbelieving. “And you didn’t discuss what happened with Sirius, didn’t bring it up, just ran away? That’s my boy.” Remus doesn’t reply. “Christ, Remus, if you’re that bad, get some fucking help.”

“I  _ am,  _ I have, I have a bloody therapist.” Lyall makes a disgusted face. “I… I had to get registered.” The mug in Lyall’s hand is unsteady as he sets it down. “So…”

“Alright, Remus, congratulations to you-”

“Stop it, dad, seriously, stop. I had to register for work.” Lyall shakes his head. Remus feels a familiar sting of frustration. “If I needed a job, I  _ had _ to. I thought about it for a whole month. I had to.” 

“Suit yourself.”

“Do you understand that, dad, do you? I’ve got my own pride, I have. Matters more to me than it does to you.” 

“You spent so long keeping it a secret.”

“It was your fucking fault in the first place.”

“That’s low of you,” Lyall scoffs, scowling into his mug, “I thought we moved past that.”

“Easier for you to do, though, isn’t it?” Remus’s last words hang in the air between them. The two of them stare at each other, too proud to apologize, content for the most part to let this argument freeze between them and go unresolved. That’s how it always is with Lyall. It’s why Remus moved out as soon as he could, and why he visits every odd year. His dad has become bitter and angry, the emotions compounding further every year, and Remus glares across the table at Lyall, who glares right back.

“What are you doing for supper?” Remus spits. “I can cook.” 

**-**

Sirius is asleep on the sofa with Joey when Remus returns. He’s quiet coming home, pressing the door shut with a gentle hand, and tiptoeing into the dark house. Sirius is curled up in the fetal position, the way he sleeps when alone. Joey is curled up next to him, tip of his nose touching his bushy tail. They are his family, Remus thinks with a choked feeling in his throat. He drapes a blanket over Sirius and doesn’t touch Joey so as not to startle him. Drifts down the hallway and falls asleep in bed alone.

**-**

Both Remus and Sirius apologize, and they lay their issues out on the table for each other to view, work themselves down to raw and vulnerable animals that stare at each other with gleaming eyes, dripping lips, hungry hearts and they lap up each others’ angst in these metaphorical ways; both of them have always had trouble coming clean about problems in their life but Remus makes a pot of catnip tea and they drink the whole thing while speaking.

They do not place the blame on each other.

Sirius has post traumatic stress disorder, and he admits this rather grudgingly, arms crossed over his chest and eyes on the sofa. Remus swears he can hear his teeth grinding.

“It’s nightmares,” Sirius says, “And flashbacks, and all my memories being fucked up, because you have no idea how deep that goes. Every day there’s about a hundred questions I want to ask you because I can’t fucking remember. I can never remember. I can’t fucking get it up, I can’t sleep properly, I can’t function. I can’t do magic.”

“You can do magic.”

“I can’t do it properly. I can do what I’ve been trained to, for work, but I’ve tried casting a Patronus, you should see how pathetic that is. I can’t Apparate, some days I can’t even cast  _ Lumos. _ ” Sirius leans forward to refill his mug of tea. “And I’m so sorry that I went and got drunk, I shouldn’t have, I should’ve gone to the Weasleys, or to find Kingsley. Or stayed with you.”

“I’m not going to kill myself.”

“It seems like it, sometimes.” Remus lets out a shaky breath. Sirius scratches at his jaw, obviously uncomfortable, and looks across the sofa at where Remus is sitting. He feels untethered, weightless. 

“I’m not going to kill myself,” Remus repeats. “Count on that, okay?” Sirius just shrugs. “I love you.” 

“I love you too.”

**-**

Harry’s name is picked for the Triwizard Tournament and Sirius’s only reaction is excitement. He scribbles a hasty response to his godson, punctuated with lots of exclamation marks and encouragements, and only adds a “Be careful” at the end when Remus tells him to.

“This doesn’t seem right,” Remus tells him. “Do you think I should write to Moody?”

“Don’t get so worked up, it’s no big deal, it’s fine. Our Harry, a Triwizard Champion, can you imagine?”

“Sirius-”

“What are you worried about?” Sirius’s voice has a sharp edge to it, as though inviting Remus to be paranoid, to be stupid anxious, so Sirius can then call him paranoid and shoot him down. Remus opens his mouth, then closes it. It’s never worth it to take Sirius up with a fight. His eyes flash at Remus, and his arms are crossed over his chest in that permanently defensive position. Sirius tilts his chin up, and Remus immediately associates that arrogant look on his face with  _ bad times. _

And Remus says: “You’re touched in the head if you think this is all some great big coincidence. He is too young, and they’re still letting him compete. He told you he’s fighting  _ dragons.  _ That doesn’t sound safe.”

“And he also told me that he’s pining after some bloke named Cedric!” Sirius waves the letter in his hand. “He’s just a  _ kid,  _ Remus, Dumbledore’s not going to be throwing him into some wild trap-”

“He defeated Voldemort before he was two years old, Sirius, why would anything be different when he’s fourteen?” 

“You’re wrong,” Sirius says brashly because he never knows when to stop or to back down; he shares James’s old penchant for hopeless optimism in a way that is exceedingly ignorant, childlike,  _ simple.  _ Remus is bitter and knows that life is never that easy. “You’re just a pessimist.”

“I’m not, and you know it. You know something’s wrong. I’m going to write Moody.”

“Suit yourself.” Remus huffs loudly in the perpetual frustration associated with trying to reason with Sirius. “You don’t give a toss about him, really, do you?”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Overprotective Remus ignores the part where our little Harry is writing me all about his big queer crush.” Remus blinks at him.

“Excuse me?” 

“Cedric,” Sirius says, holding out Harry’s letter to Remus, “Special on page two, read all about it.” In his letter, Harry does not readily admit to pining but his description of Cedric  _ is  _ a little more descriptive than it needs to be. Especially the initial description in which Harry says that Cedric is  _ really, really cool.  _

Remus vaguely remembers Cedric Diggory: a few years older than Harry, Hufflepuff, Quidditch player. The innocence in Harry’s words reminds Remus that Sirius, in his own way,  _ is  _ right about some things. Harry is only fourteen. Even if Remus is worried about Voldemort, Harry isn’t.

They’ve got to let him live his life normally. Sirius does not want to meddle, that much is clear, and he seems to find being at all protective of his godson is the absolute downfall of parenting. Sirius’s parents had cared far, far too much about what their eldest son had been up to. They had obsessed over the blood status of his friends. They had  _ obsessed.  _ Sirius is balanced, sane, or at least trying to put up that front.

Remus writes Moody a letter anyways. 

Moody is always a big talker, never a writer, and his response is short and sweet. He details the reasons why Remus is paranoid, assures him that Harry is in safe hands, and once again repeats that there is nothing to worry about. Remus wonders if the entire world is gaslighting him, or if he  _ is  _ just as paranoid as they say.

Harry defeats the dragon quicker than anyone else, writes them saying he’s in first place but isn’t exactly happy about it, and Sirius holds the letter to his chest and says “James would be so proud!” while Remus thinks  _ Lily wouldn’t.  _ Once again rendered a coward, knowing that something wrong will result from this foolhardiness, but Harry includes details about Cedric and the Prefect’s bath (not together, of course, Harry never once mentions romance), and Sirius’s mantra is: “Look, he’s a kid, he’s just a  _ boy,  _ he’s worried about classes and drama and romance, not Voldemort and war!” 

And so it goes.

Therapy twice a week, work every day except the weekends, walks with Joey every morning, afternoon, and evening, toast for breakfast, tea for lunch, something foreign and read out of a cookbook for dinner. Remus spends the full moons locked up in Ministry cells and now has to allot time for mental recovery, not just physical.

The seasons don’t show much on the coast except for an influx of rain and colder breezes. In December, Harry writes telling them that he wants to stay at school over Christmas, and Sirius finally reaches a Personal Parenting Crossroads. 

This happens at breakfast. Coffee mug in one hand, other hand working tangles out of his dark hair: Sirius peers at the newly delivered letter in front of him while Remus absentmindedly pets Mr. Vicious and talks to him in a soft, babying voice.

“Harry wants to stay at school over holidays, and I don’t want him to.” Sirius confesses rather plainly. Remus glances up at him, sort of surprised. “I’d like him to come home. But I don’t want to upset him! He’s got the Triwizard Tournament, the next task to plan for, and I don’t want to interrupt his studies.”

Remus wordlessly thinks that if anyone were to take a good look at this situation, namely a psychiatrist of sorts, they would think that Sirius has no idea how to parent, because he’d been raised in an abusive household and has always longed for freedom. He’s apparently terrified that telling (not asking, but  _ telling _ ) Harry to do anything will constitute abuse. 

So Remus is the one who composes the first draft of Sirius’s response because he’s overly apologetic and much too nice. 

_ Dear Harry, _

_ Congratulations on winning (defeating?) the dragon! I’m so proud of you. If you need any help with the next task, I’m always here to try to help. I know you mentioned wanting to stay at school over holidays, but I would really prefer it if you came home for Christmas. I’ve spent so many years unable to celebrate the holidays with you, so it would be really nice if you were here over the break. Your friends are always welcome to visit!  _

“...And you can ask him about Cedric, or whatever, you know, write the rest of it.” Remus says as he hands the note to Sirius, who skims it with sharp grey eyes. 

“You don’t say anything about yourself.”

“What?” 

“Here, instead of ‘I’m so proud,’ what if I put, ‘Remus and I are proud’?” Remus feels rather uncomfortable about this. “Huh, Moony, how’s that? Whatever, I’m putting it. And  _ I’m  _ not going to help him with the task, that’ll be all you…” Remus watches worriedly as Sirius adds in more anecdotes about him. “Remus, you know that Harry asks about you too? It’s not like you don’t exist to him. You’re probably closer to him than I am! Do you write with him at all?”

“Yeah, we write…” They do write, but it’s mostly about academics and Remus knows that Harry either forces most of the words out onto paper or gets Hermoine to write them for him, just like Remus writes Sirius’s letters for him. “But I’m just his old professor. You’re his godfather.”

“You’re the in-law, remember?” Sirius reminds him, smiling. He looks older when he smiles. Did it so much when he was younger that there’s weathered lines around his eyes and sharp angular wells in his cheeks when he smiles. 

Out of nowhere, Remus is accosted with a memory of James Potter and his distinguished dimples, those hollows in his brown cheeks whenever he grinned, the way Sirius used to jam his fingers into them when James smiled and James would bat him away, laughing even more, and Remus stands up to move away from the table. This happens sometimes and Remus wishes it wouldn’t. 

Sirius doesn’t pick up on Remus’s detachment, and hums to himself as he pores over the letter with a foreign sort of anxiety that Remus assumes all parents have at some point. 

“Would you put a record on, Moony? Can’t stand the silence.” After hearing nothing but rogue waves crashing on the shore of a stone-walled prison for over a decade, Remus can understand his need for music. He puts on Sirius’s new copy of Nirvana’s “In Utero”, and lets the sound of Seattle grunge aid in his forgetting.


	8. Older Now (It Hurts)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry about my lack of a posting schedule, life is a bit crazy right now. i did a bit of switching up canon events but they're honestly so small that i doubt you'll notice.   
> cw for a flashback/panic attack

_ “... I suppose I get my strength from my parents. I know they’d be very proud of me if they could see me now… Yes, sometimes at night I still cry about them, I’m not ashamed to admit it… I know nothing will hurt me during the tournament because they’re watching over me…”  _

_ Tears start to fill those startling green eyes as our conversation turns to the parents he can barely remember… Harry has at last found love at Hogwarts. His close friend, Colin Creevey, says that Harry is rarely seen out of the company of one Hemione Granger, a stunningly pretty Muggle-born girl who, like Harry, is one of the top students in the school... _

Sirius’s grey eyes widen as they pass over the news article. He shifts the paper in his hands and peers at it for closer inspection as though in disbelief over the words that Rita Skeeter had the audacity of publishing front page on the Prophet, for god’s sakes. 

Then, gullible as ever, Sirius asks: “Harry didn’t say that, did he? About crying over his parents? And he’s not a top student at all, his marks are rather poor.” 

“No, all of it’s tosh, he didn’t say a single word of it. Fucking Rita Skeeter.”

“Wow, Moony, tell me how you really feel.” 

“Honestly, I can’t believe what that woman has to say about him. And the stuff she’d said about  _ you,  _ too, back in the day.”

“And about you.” Sirius says it gently but there’s something in his voice that remembers the filth Rita had to write about Remus after Snape had publicly outed him as a werewolf. Remus feels his face heat up. “It’s not malicious, anyways, just embarrassing. Oh well. Harry’s got thick skin. Now, help me with the crossword, will you…?” Sirius rustles the newspaper as he searches for the crossword in the back. 

“Are you ever worried about Harry?” 

“Am I ever…?” Sirius scoffs. “Remus, unlike you, I don’t spend every free hour of my life worrying. I  _ care _ about Harry, but that doesn’t mean I have to sit around and bother over him at all hours. He’s his own person. I don’t need to micromanage.” Remus doesn’t respond. “Oh, come off it, I know you’re judging me.” Sirius lowers the paper so his frustrated expression is on display for Remus to see. 

“I’m still a bit suspicious…”

“Moody wrote you back, didn’t he? If I trust anyone, I trust Moody.” Remus cannot say he agrees, but remains silent either way. Sirius rolls his eyes and returns to the paper. “Aha, here we go! Help me, now, for two across… what spell is used to conjure a flock of birds?”

**-**

Harry returns home for the holidays in an unfortunate period where Remus is in a very depressed state, and he’s still in bed when Sirius arrives with Harry after picking him up at King’s Cross. Remus had wanted to go this time, as he wanted to go every time. He hadn’t been able to. 

The full moon is tomorrow and Remus is dreading it. In his condition of disconsolate self pity, Remus hears the noises of family, Harry and Sirius talking and laughing, and the non-noise of Joey, because the dog has never barked in the whole time they’ve had him, and Remus does not get up from bed. 

Sirius comes to check on him once Harry is settled in.

“Moony, how about dinner?”

“Not hungry.”

“Shall I bring you some tea?”

“If you like.” 

“Remus, can you please get out of bed and come eat dinner?” Sirius’s voice has turned sharp. His grey eyes seem to snap with frustration, and Remus lies in the tense silence left by the end of Sirius’s sentence, and he considers it. And then Sirius says it again. “Please.” 

Remus struggles to walk once finally on his feet. Sometimes he hurts more before the full moon than after. He’d sometimes used a cane at Hogwarts, especially in winter months like these when his joints are sore and arthritic, aching with intense and unrelenting pain, but he doesn’t want Sirius to see him using it. 

One downfall of Sirius Black is his intense aversion to personal weakness. Sirius who had been subject to horrific abuse throughout his childhood and adolescence, who had ran away from torture and left an entire family behind him, of course Sirius had his problems and yet he had kept so quiet about them. Pickled his head with alcohol once old enough and a bottle had become his therapy. 

Sirius doesn’t like discussing his problems and is still so closed off about them. He’s defensive, distracting. He has terrible nightmares, is apparently incapable of physical sexual desire, and sometimes loses touch with reality. It must be hell for him to go to therapy, Remus thinks, and he often wonders if Sirius even goes at all or if he’s just lying about it. But he comes back from his scheduled sessions on Tuesday nights pale faced and quiet, brooding and sad, and they will have very calm evenings until Sirius suggests taking the bike for a spin.

Yet, despite it all, Sirius has always been kind to Remus. When he can’t walk, when he can barely get out of bed. Sirius does not think this weakness is shameful. He helps Remus down the hall, and diligently unwraps his arm from around him as they enter the kitchen. Harry is playing with Joey, batting at his paws and laughing when the dog pounces gently at him- learning, it seems, how to be a real dog who barks out loud and plays with his humans.

“Hi, Remus!” Harry grins up at him. His hair is too long, all shaggy down his neck, and there’s purplish bruises along one arm, darker than anything against his brown skin. “How are you?”

“I’m okay, just a bit under the weather. Moon’s coming up. How are you?” Remus sits down heavily at the table, sighing in relief to not have to stand for longer than a few minutes, and Harry relocates from the floor to a chair while Joey trails behind, nudging Harry’s hand to pet him. Harry talks loudly and quickly, tells Remus about the dragons and his next clue, about the other champions, the Goblet of Fire itself, and Remus listens. Harry talks briefly about Cedric Diggory, and he hasn’t the complexion to turn red, but Remus hears something in his tone of voice that’s different.

Sirius cooks tonight which means they just eat pasta and tomato sauce. He isn’t much of a chef. Remus has no appetite and only eats half of what Sirius puts on his plate. Harry has seconds to make Sirius feel better. In the dark sky, the moon grows.

**-**

Remus returns from his full moon at the Ministry feeling worn to the bone, and literally, he is aching and can feel the stinging ache of bones beneath skin; his right leg has such a bad tremor in it that he nearly collapses a few steps into the home and holds tight to a bookshelf, gritting his teeth in pain, feeling breaths born of panic in his chest, and he tries to breathe and correct the leg, it all hurts so much, his head is pounding with a white hot headache and then Harry is asking in a voice quite concerned:

“Alright, Remus?”

Remus’s first response would be “Of-fucking-course not” if not for the fact that his fourteen year old godson-in law is the one asking him the question, and instead he nods and attempts to loosen his grip on the bookshelf.

“Do you need anything?” What Remus needs is Sirius, who is most definitely still asleep, the selfish tosser. Remus usually limps in from the moon and collapses in bed while Sirius wakes up, and then Sirius will help him, but Harry is here.

When Harry isn’t here, Remus will arrive tired and angry, usually swearing, and sometimes crying when Sirius properly wakes up and talks to him about what had happened. Remus can do none of those things, and Harry is still waiting for a response, and Remus just shakes his head no. 

Remus says, “Just Sirius,” and Harry says, “Okay, I’ll go wake him,” and Remus thinks that he would lower himself to the ground if not for the fact that Harry will return, and Remus doesn’t want Harry seeing him like this. Sirius returns without Harry.

“Hi, Moony, love-”

“Hi.” Remus tells him and wraps his arms around Sirius while his right leg gives out and he sinks against his partner while Sirius holds him up, a heavy weight that is solid, and Remus is in incredible pain, thinks he might start crying. “Can we go to bed?”

“Yes, of course.” Sirius helps him down the hall and Remus finally drops onto the bed. Everything aches. He sleeps all day and all night and all day again. Wakes up in the afternoon feeling somewhat refreshed. Sirius is gone, at work, and the house is quiet. Remus wants a smoke.

Sirius has left his leather jacket on the coat hooks by the door. There’s usually two jackets there: Sirius’s leather and Remus’s tweed. Remus takes the leather. 

It’s freezing out, but the sky is blue. The wooden beach chairs are set up, but Sirius has taken the umbrella down for the winter. Remus has on a jumper and Sirius’s leather jacket, and cups the joint with one hand as he lights it with a spark of his hand. Wordless magic. His body is so tired after the moons, but his magic is always incredibly strong. The fire stays, not extinguished by the wind, and Remus takes a deep pull on the joint, adjusting it between his lips, breathes heavy warm smoke and feels comfort.

He sits and smokes by himself for a while. 

The sea is a mixture of light blue and grey, and it crashes against rocks on the coast. Remus needs another vacation. He thinks he’ll talk to Sirius about it in the new year. In the summertime, their cottage on the coast had been warm and sunny. Cool breezes through warm air, blue skies and all around happiness, but now the coast feels dreary. Remus misses Wales.

There has always been something about the earthen, grassy scent of country fields and the way the sky can stretch on forever uninterrupted that feels incredibly like home. Of course, the smell of cow shit and the muddy roads that suck up tyres and boots alike, and the way it feels mostly as though there’s nothing to do but sit inside, drink tea, read a book and maybe play a board game. Put on a record, flick on the telly, kick up your feet. Home.

Sirius is a city boy, raised in London and then Cardiff, and has now resigned himself to a small town at the edge of the country that he’s so eager to get away from. Remus wonders if they should move, good and proper, to the continent. Or even farther.

“Hiya,” Someone says. Remus turns to see Harry walking slowly towards him, two mugs in his hands, black hair blown wild by the wind. “I made hot chocolate. Makes you feel better, right?”

“Thank you.” Harry sits down across from him. He looks a bit strange, wearing a Weasley Christmas jumper with an unzipped hoodie on top of it, and Remus assumes he’s in the teenage phase where he doesn’t like wearing coats, or dressing properly for cold weather. “Feeling better?” Remus nods and readjusts the joint in his fingers to take a sip of the warm, creamy chocolate. Harry’s eyes focus on the edge of the mug, Remus’s fingers, the joint.

“Is that weed?”

“Yes.” 

“So  _ that’s  _ what’s making you feel better.” Remus smiles and puts the mug down, taking another pull on the joint, watching Harry’s eyes widen. “Can I-”

“Have a go? Absolutely not.”

“I’ll just get a secondhand high, then.”

“There you go.” Harry watches Remus puff on the joint with this sly little smile on his face.

“You’re so cool, Remus. Just wait until Ron and Hermione hear about this.” Remus finishes the joint and waves his wand at the roach to vanish it. He feels warm and heavy, finally painless, and sits back in the chair with his hands wrapped around the mug of chocolate to keep him warm. 

He asks Harry about school, and Harry talks. He’s very much like James in the respect that he doesn’t exactly know when to stop, but Remus listens patiently as he recounts his unfortunate tale of the Yule Ball, weaving in humor to his story just like Sirius does, and Remus laughs at all the right times. Then Harry gets started on Moody, much to Remus’s entertainment. 

“... And after he turned Malfoy into a ferret I  _ knew  _ he would be a good teacher, but then during our first class he did some  _ weird  _ stuff. He taught us the Unforgivable Curses!” This does not sound too far-fetched for Moody. “He put me under the Imperius-”

“He did  _ what _ ?” Remus snaps. Harry falters.

“He just made me dance around, it wasn’t so bad-”

“Harry that curse is Unforgivable for a reason. No one should be using it on their students.  _ Shite.  _ Has he done anything else?”

“He just… he tortured a spider, but that’s all.” Remus shakes his head. Harry looks wary, now. “He’s not so bad.” Remus wants another joint. “Have you ever been under any of them?”

“Hm?”

“Unforgivables?” It’s an odd, morbid question. Harry pulls his hoodie tighter around him and hunches forward against the wind, mug in both hands.

“Yes. Just Imperius. During the war.” The wind whips them wildly, but Remus is too weak to stand up and go back in. His pain has receded, and even if it’s cold, it is peaceful idleness. 

“Will you tell me about the war?” Harry bursts out. “People always mention it, just calling it ‘the war’, but no one ever elaborates, and I know my parents fought, and they died because of it, and I don’t know  _ anything,  _ and textbooks only explain so much, and Sirius won’t say a word on it.” He breathes out. “Sorry, if you don’t want to, but I’m just curious, and honestly? I have a right to know.”

“Ah, that’s alright.” Remus is comfortably high and is thirteen years detached from the war, so fuck it, right? “It was the worst time, Harry. Your grandad, Fleamont, and Dumbledore and Moody created a group called the Order of the Phoenix. Dumbledore’s idea, but your grandad and Moody were also in charge. I joined when I was seventeen, in my sixth year. I… Dumbledore wanted me as a spy. To join up with werewolf packs, see if they were on Voldemort’s side, that sort of stuff.”

“You were a spy?”

“Yeah, I was, for a time. For our side. I got kidnapped, once. Well, held hostage, more like. I was with the pack for months. They knew I was spying. And everyone else was fighting. You’d go to headquarters, get an assignment, and go on a mission. Fighting Death Eaters, dark creatures, monsters, giants, whatever.”

“Werewolves?” Remus looks at Harry.

“Yes, werewolves too. People died all the time. So many good people. My best friends. Everyone I knew was dying. If you were at home, you couldn’t sleep for you were worried about getting a message to go fight, or a letter saying someone had died. You were constantly on guard.”

“Constant vigilance.” Remus laughs bitterly.

“Moody told it to us at every mission. Constant vigilance, too right. Me and Sirius, by the end, we didn’t trust each other. Your dad didn’t even trust me. Everyone was lying about where they were going, Dumbledore said all our missions were confidential. Too many secrets. They destroyed us.” Remus quiets. 

He remembers the war, now, in stunning detail. Arriving at headquarters after a mission, unable to stop crying and not knowing why. Shaking. Running on an hour of sleep and a caffeine overdose. Dueling, spells flashing in the darkness, smoke and fear, fire, screams and you’re trying to put a name to the voice- was that Sirius screaming or a Death Eater, is that Lily crying or a bystander? Never, ever knowing what was happening. Always on edge, always panicked. Any free time was spent smoking weed and sobbing, waking up to nightmares, descending into panic attacks when you weren’t on a mission.

Holding it together so loosely in public until you can fall apart in private.

“It was the worst thing that could ever happen, Harry. Our lives were torn apart. Anyone who fought- you either died or pieces of you did. The survivors were never the same.”  _ I am a survivor,  _ Remus thinks,  _ I am a survivor but I can’t talk about it like I am.  _ Harry is staring off at the ocean, thinking about the war he had been born in the midst of, the war that had shattered and shaped his life so greatly.

**-**

Ron and Hermione come to visit a few days before New Years and are apparently delighted by the fact that Remus and Sirius are together and serve as parents for Harry. Hermione sits down and has a long conversation with Remus about her new effort at school: a club called S.P.E.W that Sirius had laughed out loud at until both Remus and Hermione had told him to shut up.

There’s a fireworks show in town for New Years, and Harry, Ron, and Hermione express a desire to go see the show. It’s Sirius who they first ask to take them, but he denies their invitation. 

“Not a big fan of the noise…” He looks wary and pets Joey out of some form of comfort, looks over at Remus, who knows exactly why he’s scared. “And Joey won’t like it much either, so someone’s got to stay with him. Remus will take you, won’t you, Remus?” And so Remus takes the three kids farther down the coast where a small crowd gathers to watch 1994 turn into 95 over the edge of the frozen, bitter sea.

The fireworks light up the water in different colors. Remus sees the sea glow red, pink, white, waves crashing beneath the booming of fireworks.

“I’ve never seen Muggle ones before,” Ron tells Harry and Hermione quietly, so the surrounding Muggles don’t overhear, “Fred and George could do a better job of it.”

“Oh, come on, they’re sort of beautiful, aren’t they?” Hermione says. “Happy new year, anyways.”

“Happy new year, Hermione,” Harry tells her.

“Happy new year.” Ron adds. Remus stands a ways away from them, watching the sea crash in blurs of color, wishing he had Sirius to kiss. They all sit down, eventually, watching the fireworks until the finale, when the air goes thick with smoke as the sparkles and loud bangs go on and on until one fizzing, overwhelming firework explodes into millions of tiny fragments. Harry and Ron whistle loudly with others in the crowd, and even Remus colors himself impressed by the show.

The kids talk loudly on their way back home, and tell Remus they’re going to hang out in the garden for a while, and Remus tells them goodnight. Sirius is in bed with the lights off and curtains drawn when Remus comes home. Remus is in a very fair mood, oddly hopeful about the future, and is already worried when he sees the state that Sirius is in.

“Sirius, wake up, it’s 1995!” Sirius does not stir. “Can’t I get a New Years’ kiss?”

“Please don’t, Moony, not right now.” Sirius’s voice is small. Joey is on the bed with him, curled up close for comfort. Sirius sits up like a shadow in the darkness, hugging himself. Hair hangs in his face and Remus likens him to La Llorona. 

“What’s wrong?”

“The- the fireworks. All the bangs, and the colors… red and green…” 

“Sirius…”

“It’s stupid, fucking bollocks, I know and I’m sorry-”

“Don’t, Sirius, it’s not stupid.” Remus drops his coat on the floor and sits down gently on the bed so as not to displace Joey. He reaches out to Sirius, who does not move into his embrace, but holds out his own hand to knit with Remus’s. He takes a deep breath. 

“I-I was, I had…” Sirius pauses, words choked up in his throat. There’s a loud boom from outside, another stray firework, and Sirius flinches hard, nearly cowering in the dark room.

“It’s  _ those _ , the other ones, the ones that aren’t part of the big display, I think- I thought someone was coming to hurt us, coming here, I thought about putting up wards, and I thought about Apparating away, somewhere quiet, but I couldn’t think of somewhere isolated enough, I was panicking, and it’s New Years’  _ everywhere  _ so there’s fireworks… fireworks, everywhere, and I thought I’d go to Hawaii or something since it’s in a different time zone, but I couldn’t do the maths, and I-I-” 

Another bang sounds outside, even closer than before, and Sirius starts crying.

“Sirius, hey, it’s just fireworks, love, we  _ can _ Apparate to Hawaii, we can go anywhere. We can go to Wales, if you like, I know a forest there-” Remus feels he might have been on the way to talking Sirius down from a PTSD induced panic attack when a final bang sounds, hard enough to rattle the glass in the window panes, and there’s a loud whooping and laughing outside. 

“ _ Fuck!”  _ Sirius curses loud enough to wake up Joey and fumbles with his wand, wiping tears from his eyes, while Remus hushes him. 

“It’s Harry, Sirius, it’s just Harry…” Remus is nearly out the door of their bedroom when Sirius calls for him to stop in a broken voice. Sirius is on his knees in bed, wand raised, and he’s still crying, fear in his dark eyes, he says: “Remus  _ don’t,  _ it’s not safe- they’ve found us, I knew it would happen-”

“Sirius, it’s  _ Harry _ . I will be right back.” Remus flicks on the lights in the bedroom and storms outside. It had been Harry after all. 

Him and Ron are standing in the firelight of some fizzing abomination which sparkles around the air, changing colors. It’s on fire, and traces out the shape of something birdlike before exploding into a firework above their heads. Remus sees Ron’s hair lit up bright ginger, the reflection of bright red in Harry’s glasses, and expressions of glee and delight on their young faces. Hermoine is sitting on a rock, cupping her cheeks in her hands, looking on. Smiling, too.

“Harry, Ron, I’m going to ask you to please put that out.” Harry and Ron both jump, twisting around in surprise, jaws dropping in surprise at the sight of Remus standing there. All sparks from the firework have gone out save for one, which starts fizzling all over again. This one is purple. It’s a smart technology, but now is now the time for it.

“I-” Ron begins, “I’m not quite sure  _ how,  _ my brothers came up with it, you see, it’s still a bit experimental-” The firework glows brighter, draws the shape of a huge curving W, and then explodes into a banging shower of purple light, turning them all lilac for a moment. “Christ,  _ sorry,  _ I don’t know how-”

“Come on, Remus, it’s New Years!” Harry chides. “Let us have some fun!”

“ _ Evanesco _ !” Remus shouts. The firework disappears. The four of them are left in darkness. “Please,” He says harshly, “Spare some empathy for Sirius. He’s been through war, for god’s sakes. He’s in a bad state right now, and setting off fireworks right outside the house is not helping anyone.”

“I’m so sorry, Remus, only we didn’t realize that the firework just doesn’t go out-”

“I don’t care, Hermione. Have some forethought.” Remus understands that he’s being unnecessarily harsh, but the memory of Sirius crying on the bed, begging Remus not to leave, had hit very close to his heart. “I need to check on him, alright? Harry, I’d like a word with you before you go to bed.” In the darkness, Remus can barely see Harry’s weak nod. 

Sirius is breaking down when Remus returns.

He’s sitting on the floor by the side of the bed as though he had been trying to hide, and his arms are wrapped around his knees, rocking back and forth. Tears streaming down his face. Eyes closed.

“Sirius, Sirius, come back to me, it’s okay.” Sirius does not respond. Remus curses and runs to the kitchen, returning with peppercorns, which he shoves under Sirius’s nose. This works a bit.

“Fuck, fuck, that’s  _ disgusting _ ,” Sirius sobs. “Take it away.”

“Get up, Sirius, come on, stand up-”

“Stop, stop,  _ stop! _ ” Remus stuffs a few peppercorns into Sirius’s mouth. This finally does the trick. Sirius spits them out, coughing, finally opening his eyes and standing up, spitting dramatically. “Fuck, Remus, what are you doing?”

“You- you were having an episode!”

“Yes, Jesus, I know! Fuck!” Sirius tears his hands back through his hair. “I’m going to go for a ride-”

“Sirius, don’t be stupid, come on.”

“I’m not stupid, I need to get away.”

“Sirius, you’ll get  _ hit  _ by a firework-”

“I’m taking it on the road!” He shouts. “I’m driving! Fuck, Moony, leave it alone! I’ll be back soon.” And he storms out of the house in a whirl of defensive anger while Remus stands powerless. Joey whimpers. Remus sighs heavily, now lost in worried thought.

Sirius had held it together during the war. He had been very, very strong. Stronger than Remus, even. His dueling skills were legendary, he was impeccably fast and accurate, he thought on his feet, and he was so fearless. He had been sent on mission after mission by Moody- playing up all of his strengths.

Sirius had been incredible.

He would have been a hero of the Wizarding War if not for the way things turned out. The heroes are buried six feet deep. The veterans are not remembered.

Sirius Black can hardly light his wand some days, and when fireworks go off outside, he curls up into a ball and rocks back and forth like the child he was never allowed to be. 

War is hell, someone once said.

After effects are the seventh circle. 


	9. You've Got Me In Your Corner

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey y'all, sorry for never updating this. i'd been hella uninspired for a while but it's all coming back now and my school semester is over so i have a free month to plan out and organize this fic.  
> cw for brief references to suicide

**_DIAGNOSTIC CRITERIA FOR PTSD_ **

_ Presence of one (or more) of the following intrusion symptoms associated with the traumatic event(s), beginning after the traumatic event(s) occurred: _

  * _Recurrent, involuntary, and intrusive distressing memories of the traumatic event(s)._


  * Recurrent distressing dreams in which the content and/or affect of the dream are related to the traumatic event(s). 


  * Dissociative reactions (e.g., flashbacks) in which the individual feels or acts as if the traumatic event(s) were recurring. (Such reactions may occur on a continuum, with the most extreme expression being a complete loss of awareness of present surroundings.) 


  * Intense or prolonged psychological distress at exposure to internal or external cues that symbolize or resemble an aspect of the traumatic event(s).


  * Marked physiological reactions to internal or external cues that symbolize or resemble an aspect of the traumatic event(s).



“Remus- he just-” Harry is standing in the living room looking rather shaken, staring back and forth from the door to Remus. The roar of Sirius’s motorbike is still fading in the air. “He just  _ left,  _ it looked like he was- was he crying?”

“It’s fine.” Remus looks out the window into the dark night. Maybe it’s  _ not  _ fine, not really, not the way Sirius has these panic attacks and then finds it fit to pretend they’ve never happened; he will disappear into the smoke of the night and drive through those dark streets along the coast, speeding so fast he could fly away. He  _ can  _ fly away. Harry looks distraught.

“I’m so sorry, Remus, I didn’t mean- we were just mucking about-”

“It’s okay, Harry, it’s fine. Sit down, okay?” Looking as though it takes maximum effort, Harry lowers himself onto the sofa. His knee is jiggling so quickly that Remus wants to tell him to quit it, but that will give the impression that he’s angry, and he’s  _ not,  _ honest, he just can’t get the image of Sirius curled into a ball, rocking back and forth, out of his mind.

“So what- what happened? What’s wrong with Sirius?” Remus sighs heavily before beginning.

“Sirius isn’t going to tell you this, because he’s embarrassed, so I will, because you deserve to know.” Remus wonders for a moment if he is breaking Sirius’s trust by telling Harry this. But Harry is sitting here blaming himself for his godfather’s firework-induced panic attack, and that’s not right. “He has a mental illness, something that lots of people have, and it’s called post traumatic stress disorder. They shorten it to PTSD. You can tell from the name, then… you get it after you’ve been through something traumatic.” 

“What- Azkaban? The dementors?”

“Yes, that. And war. And… he had a terrible childhood, Harry. Which makes him more prone to it as an adult. The fireworks reminded him of the war. He had… I don’t know what he had. A flashback, a panic attack, an episode. But he was taken back in time. He thought that Death Eaters had found us here, and he was prepared to fight.”

Harry’s face has crumpled in a motion of guilt, and Remus realizes that he isn’t helping. 

“Harry, I’m not saying this to make you feel bad, please understand that. This isn’t about what you did, I just need you not to do it again.”

“I just don’t want to mess up and do something else wrong.”

“You won’t, it’s- it’s very specific things, you know? I mean, you’ve never seen him like this before. It was just this certain situation.”

“Have  _ you  _ seen him like this before?” And of course Remus has: Remus has seen Sirius like this in many different ways in those short years they’ve spent together.

Sirius waking up sobbing in sixth year, or the way he would quietly weep when he thought no one could hear, the desperation of staying awake when all he wanted was sleep and sleep had not been safe. Sirius after Hogwarts: drunk, high, passed out on the floor, ground, asleep in the bathtub, crashed out on the sofa with the stove still burning in the kitchen. Sirius waking up to Remus angry and not knowing how to respond without crying.

Their worst fight: Remus shouting at Sirius for ruining his own life and saying things he shouldn’t have, things that Remus can remember clear as day:  _ You were given anything you needed- your parents could have loved you, they would have done anything for you, and you ruined it for yourself forever! _

Sirius’s throat tearing as he screamed out loud:  _ It wasn’t my fault! THEY- TORTURED- ME! IT WASN’T MY FAULT! _

Remus realizes that he cannot finish this conversation. 

“I have, yes, I have, but you won’t- it’s not your fault, it’s… it’s okay, Harry. We just have to be patient, because it’s sort of hard for him to be back in the real world, sometimes. Even though he’s been back for a while. Sometimes it’s just too much, like tonight.”

Harry chews at his lip and fiddles with his glasses. After awhile he asks, “...But he’ll be okay? He won’t be like this forever?” 

“It’s a lot to work through. He’s trying. Honestly, he’s functioning a lot better than I would expect someone who’d spent a decade in Azkaban would, especially someone innocent. But he’s trying.” Remus rubs at his scarred jaw and puts his head in his hands for a moment before looking up at Harry again. “You know that he’s not usually like this. And anyways… it’s late. Maybe we should get some sleep.” Remus can’t organize his words. He just wishes that Sirius were here.

“Okay.” Harry looks like he doesn’t hate this idea. “Only, just. What… what happened in his childhood?” Of course he’s curious and this  _ still  _ isn’t Remus’s place. It’s the same with the story of what happened to Alice and Frank. This isn’t Remus’s place, but Harry’s big eyes and somewhat pleading expression put him in a precarious position.

Harry picks up on the silence and he backtracks: “It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it.”

“It’s just not my place.” Remus tells him. “But Sirius won’t ever tell you, I’m sure.” Harry doesn’t respond. “I won’t go into detail, anyways. His parents abused him. They used dark magic. No one deserves to be treated like that, much less a child.” He emphasizes the word ‘child’ because Sirius had already been jumpy and prone to bad dreams during their first year at Hogwarts. 

Remus wonders if Sirius can even remember their first year. 

“Let’s go to bed, okay? I’m sure Sirius will be back soon.” 

“Can I wait up for him?” Harry looks still nervous, still guilty.

“Might be best not to, Harry. I don’t know… ah, I don’t know. I think you should go to bed.” And so they do. Retire to their separate rooms and Remus hopes that Ron and Hermione hadn’t been eavesdropping but if they had, does it matter? 

It’s 1995 and Remus falls asleep alone.

**-**

Remus wakes up and Sirius isn’t back. He goes into the kitchen, empty. The whole house is quiet. Remus takes Joey for a walk, and there are no signs of Sirius or his motorbike. Back at home, Remus makes toast and tea and eats quietly. Harry comes into the kitchen with a hopeful expression on his face that dies when he sees Remus by himself. 

“Morning,” Remus says.

“He’s not back? Where’d he go? When will he be back? Aren’t you worried?”

“He’ll be back.” 

“How are you sure?”

“Because I know him, Harry, he’ll be back soon.”

“That’s what you said last night.”

“Harry, he’s going to be back today, I’m sure of it.” 

“And then you’ll say tomorrow, and the day after… what if he doesn’t come back? What if he got into a crash, or something? What are you gonna do then, keep sitting here and waiting, telling yourself he’ll come home?” 

There’s a thrumming roar outside that Remus would recognize anywhere, and he doesn’t even hold any triumph over Harry as the sound of the motorbike approaches and then cuts. Harry looks somewhat abashed but does not apologize. He sits down at the table, gets back up, and then sits back down again. The front door opens. Joey slinks across the floor to see if it’s his person.

And it is.

Sirius looks unlike himself, and a hush falls over the already quiet table as he stumbles in- black boots loud on the floor, leather jacket hanging from his thin frame. He looks like a punk, a druggie, an alkie: many roles that he’s slipped in and out of over time but doesn’t fit now. 

Now he is Sirius Black but traumatized, Sirius Black but a ministry worker, a father, a life partner, and he is trying to make the best of a life that he hadn’t planned on living, not like this. If the war hadn’t happened, Remus doesn’t know what would have become of Sirius. Remus is sure that the aching pain of childhood abuse would have caught up sooner or later. Remus is sure that an overdose would not have been out of the question.

“Hello.” Sirius says as though he hadn’t left at all, kept them up worrying all night long. “How are we?” 

**-**

After Harry and his friends leave for Hogwarts again, Sirius is left to explain what had happened and does a rather incomprehensible job of it. Remus forgives him anyways and then Sirius says he’d gone to visit his cousin Andromeda and her husband and daughter, Nymphadora, and Remus has a minor understanding of who she is because he’d met her as a little kid. 

Andromeda, her mother, had invited Sirius over for dinner at some point most likely in 1979, and Sirius had brought Remus to meet her. It had not been one of those millions of “this is my good friend Remus” situations, it had been a “this is my boyfriend Remus” situation and Andromeda and her husband Ted had been so very kind and welcoming. 

Nymphadora had been insane, for lack of a better word, six years old with fiery orange hair that made her look somewhat like a troll doll (something that Remus had pointed out afterwards and had kept Sirius laughing for days), and she’d thrown food everywhere, screamed, ripped heads off of her dolls and then magicked them back on. 

“You went to see  _ her _ ?”

“She’s twenty two, now, if that helps. We all age.” Sirius defends. “I went to see Andromeda, and Tonks just happened to be there, you know, for the holidays. And Tonks… she’s matured- we’ve  _ been  _ writing to each other. She’s cool! We have a lot in common!”

“Tonks?”

“She likes to be called that, and anyways, I’ve invited her over for tea tomorrow.  _ We _ get along. You don’t have to, but I’m sure you can try. You can be charismatic when you try!” Remus hates trying. 

The next day, Tonks comes in with the wind and her hair turns three different colors in the first few minutes that Remus sees her; her face is bright with laughter and energy, and she throws herself on Sirius in a hug that he sweeps her up in just the same. And then she grabs Remus’s hand, shaking it fast and hard, beaming at him.

“So good to finally meet you! Sirius never stops talking about you in letters, you know, he practically  _ worships  _ the ground you walk on, and, Merlin!” She takes a few steps back and holds two hands up to frame the pair of them as though in a camera lens. “You two are so cute together!” She bursts out. Sirius is grinning, Remus already feels annoyed. 

“Come on in, then, do you fancy some tea?”

“Have you got anything tropical?” Tonks asks as she follows Sirius into the kitchen. Joey is cowering by the countertop, nervous at having a new person in the house, and Tonks drops to her knees and extends her arms in a wide gesture upon the sight of him. “Hello, sweetie,” She says gently, “How are you? What’s up?”

“He’s a bit shy,” Sirius explains as he steps around Joey, opening up the tea-cabinet to reveal their options to Tonks. “Take your pick, we’ve got millions of types.”

“ _ Wow,  _ that’s a lot of tea.”

“Remus is a bit obsessive.” Remus is standing with Joey at his feet, absentmindedly scratching behind the dog’s pointy ears, watching Sirius and Tonks move and talk with this shared excitement. He can see the family resemblances in their faces, though Tonks  _ is  _ a metamorphmagus, but there’s something about the haughty cut of their cheekbones and the way their eyes sparkle. 

But Sirius’s eyes do well to remain one color (generally): a hazy grey that can be blue in the right light, while Tonks’s had been green when she walked in but now are a bright violet. 

“So, er, what do you do for work?” Remus asks her.

“Still in Auror training, got a year left. You and Sirius are with the Ministry too, yeah?” 

“Yeah,” Remus says and does not hasten to elaborate on his rather embarrassingly low position, and instead changes topics. “Do you know Kingsley Shacklebolt? He’s an old friend of mine, an Auror too.” Tonks’s heart shaped face lights up at the prospect of Remus actually making an attempt to converse with her, and she responds.

“Yeah, I know Kingsley! He’s a good bloke. Honestly, I think he’ll be Minister of Magic someday. I won’t lie. Ooh, raspberry almond rooibos, I’ll try this one!” Sirius makes them all tea and produces some half stale digestives. Remus had recently been thinking about actually baking some biscuits since Sirius’s culinary skills are somewhat lacking, although he does like to eat, which Remus can’t really relate to.

In the earlier days of the war, before 1980, Sirius had made a disaster out of the kitchen in order to have dinner with Remus. It had been a way to hold them together, Sirius’s wordless  _ I love you and I’m going to share this meal with you,  _ and the food had been shit and only made better by the wine and the records Remus would put on while they ate; they’d dance afterwards, often, in the cluttered and food stained kitchen or the even untidier living room.

Tripping over books, slipping on papers, accidentally breaking records (it  _ had  _ happened, and Remus may or may not have cried) by stepping on them. Remus has fond memories of those evenings. He wonders, as he so often does, if Sirius even remembers at all.

Tonks is discussing memories now, and Sirius is hanging on her every word in what seems like attempts to refresh his mind. It’s rare to have Sirius Black pay full attention to you, and his grey eyes are solemn as Tonks recounts childhood stories which Sirius had been included in.

“And that one time, you took me to the park, don’t ask me why, and I stole some other little girl’s hat and I put it on and it turned into a  _ different  _ hat, and you were panicking, I remember, you were shouting at me, well, not  _ shouting  _ but freaking out, and the girl and her mum were so confused and then you just, like, ran away with me.” Tonks laughs and then sighs. “Good times.”

Sirius nods empathically but still seems sort of confused, distant. Remus is sure that this memory isn’t something that Sirius can recall. 

“And I remember meeting  _ you,  _ Remus.” She points a finger at him. 

“You were a terror.” She laughs out loud.

“Yeah, I was. I remember you fixed the head of one of my dolls and I shouted at you because I  _ wanted  _ it broken.”

“Children are tough.”

“I’ll say. I bet you’re glad you get Harry after all that childhood nonsense is over with.” Remus doesn’t reply, and neither does Sirius. Tonks laughs. “Only joking! I’ve been reading all those news articles about him, you know, and I feel rather bad for him!”

“Fucking Rita Skeeter,” Sirius grumbles. The gossip starts and Tonks apparently has  _ loads  _ of dirt on assorted Ministry officials to provide. Sirius indulges her to something regarding an extreme, and Remus sits and listens, halfway bored, until Tonks asks him about teaching at Hogwarts and he’s got a bit to say about that, at least, and then they return to Land of the Past where Sirius’s voice dies from the conversation as Tonks and Remus discuss things he can’t recall.

“I think I got over a hundred detentions, for sure.” Tonks confesses. “Me and Filch were the best of friends.”

“What did you and James get, do you think?” Remus asks Sirius. “Five hundred? A thousand?” Sirius shrugs. 

“Plenty.”

“Did you give any out as a professor, Remus?”

“Erm… a few, maybe.” Remus honestly hadn’t given out any detentions in his year at Hogwarts simply because he’d never wanted to be  _ that  _ kind of teacher. He’s not a stickler. 

“What’s the worst thing you two’d ever done at school?” Remus looks at Sirius, who has his chin propped up in his hands and looks thoughtful.

“Dunno, there was plenty…” He looks at Remus.

“We poisoned those Slytherins, fourth year.” 

“You what?” Tonks interrupts. Remus had forgotten that one of ‘those Slytherins’ had included Sirius’s younger brother and only remembers this based on the look on Sirius’s face.

“Just with some stuff we grew,” Remus says quickly, “It wasn’t really  _ poison,  _ it just made them ill-”

“Consists of poison, right?”

“-and they just went to the hospital wing for a few days, and then they were fine.” Remus finishes. “We were a bit angsty, I guess.”

“Yeah, you can say that again. I remember, like, Sirius, you got in big trouble with your family, once, even my mum got involved. You apparently called your mum a neofascist reactionary- haha, my mum wouldn’t stop talking about it, that was  _ hilarious _ !” Sirius’s laughter is incredibly forced.

“That’s what got me kicked out of the house once and for all.” There’s a silence. “Do you know what’s become of her, actually?” Tonks glances at Remus, who knows exactly what had happened to Sirius’s mother.

“She passed away, back in the eighties.” Sirius’s eyes widen. “Killed herself.” And then he laughs.

“Typical, isn’t it? She was always an attention seeking narcissist. Good for her, honestly. Glad she’s gone.” And that’s that.

Remus wouldn’t call his first interaction with Tonks necessarily positive, but Sirius and her seem to get on pretty well and if Sirius is happy, then Remus is happy. In February, Mary comes to visit and brings a variable load of light back into their lives. She stays with family in London and Apparates to Cornwall often to visit Remus and Sirius. 

They go out for old-time sightseeing, revisiting old haunts around London that Mary had taken them to in their youth. Those streets are frozen and slick with grey rain, and the graveyards they visit are even more depressing. The three of them spend an entire day in Godric’s Hollow at James and Lily’s grave. They all sit around the headstone and reminisce. There is something so incredibly lonely about sitting next to the grave of your best friends who died at twenty one when you’ve been forced to keep on living.

They make a sight to see. Remus wonders if either James and Lily would have expected them to turn out this way.

Sirius covered in prison tattoos with his hair longer than ever and his body scrawny and looking older than he is. He sits with his arms wrapped around himself, tattooed fingers massaging his shoulders absentmindedly. He sits like this often and Remus assumes it’s a sort of comfort. 

Remus sits on his other side. Sitting on the cold hard ground isn’t doing his joints any favors, but any time he suggests leaving, Mary asks to stay a few more minutes and those minutes invariably turn to hours. He feels faded and weak. Mary, usually in bright colors and with a smile on her face, wears a dark expression to match her clothes. They stay until the sun sets. 

They eat dinner that night at Remus and Sirius’s house, and Mary says “The war really fucked all of us over forever. It’s not like we even had a shot at a better life, it was ruined as soon as Dumbledore asked us to join up. It would have been better to die.” She’s met with a ringing, surprised silence. “Jesus Christ, I have no idea where that came from. I’m so sorry!” And then she starts crying. 

Sirius is the one to get up and hug her; she sobs as he wraps his arms around her and gives Remus a helpless look from over her head. 

He must have talked to her about it later that night and established something about how yes, things had been awful but now there is a chance to get better. Sirius and Mary go out after work while Remus is distanced from his coworkers and comes home to hang out with Joey and listen to his old records. 

One afternoon, Remus comes home and there are three women plus Sirius Black contorting their bodies into alarming positions in the living room, and Remus already feels as though he’s done something wrong just by entering the room.

“Er.” He says, and none of them break their stances. They’re on all fours, bums in the air, and Remus feels his face heat up at the sight of Sirius with his arse in the air, his tattooed forearms bared, and his shirt falling up so Remus can see the tattoos on his stomach. “What’s up?”

“Yoga,” Mary tells him. Her grinning face is upside down. “Works wonders. Care to join!”

“Aaaand relax! Lower your body back to the mat, slowly, now…” The unfamiliar person lowers herself into a press-up position, and the three of them copy her motions as they lower themselves. This lady looks young, more Tonks’s age, and has black dreadlocks that are dyed purple at the end.

“Hello!” She says, waves. “I’m Hestia.”

“Hi!”

“I’m Tonks’s girlfriend.”

“Oh, wonderful.” Tonks smiles first at Hestia and then at Remus. “Cool. Erm, yoga, huh?”

“Yeah, I’m a yoga teacher in my off time,” Hestia explains, “Wizards really aren’t too knowledgeable about it, but it’s very good for you. You should join us!”

“Yeah, Remus, give it a go.” Sirius tells him. Remus doesn’t try it that day, but Sirius convinces him into it the Sunday after Mary leaves and Remus is feeling desperate enough to give it a go. It does make him feel better, after all, despite how stupid it makes him feel to carry out the assorted positions while Sirius mirrors his movements but does them with ease, just like he always has. He’s always been the best at mastering things quicker than anyone. 

Sirius’s magic may be weaker, but he’s damn good at yoga. It’s really no surprise at all.

And then it is spring almost out of nowhere and they leave once again. Tonks takes care of Joey and Sirius and Remus go to Thailand and Cambodia, and Remus celebrates his thirty-fifth birthday in a strange bar in Siem Reap. They had spent the day hiking around ancient ruins.

The air is sticky and humid at all times of day. Everyone smokes and the air is always hazy with moisture and cigarette smoke. The trees seem to writhe with life at night, and everywhere there is something vibrant and something alive. England in the winter is dead still, as though all life has been frozen out. 

Remus and Sirius lie in bed one night and listen to the sounds of bugs buzzing outside. Sirius has both hands behind his head and looks up at the ceiling. It’s dark in their room except for a faint orange glow from the light outside that’s always on.

“I don’t want to go home,” Sirius says. “I hate England. I’ve always fucking hated it.” Remus remembers when he and Sirius had discussed where they were going to live at some point in sixth or seventh year, when the future still looked bright and not boxed into what Dumbledore had planned for them.

Sirius had said he’d wanted to move somewhere far away, somewhere deep in the dead of summer, somewhere that they could dream up and make come true. And Remus had wanted to stay put because home was where everyone else was. James, Lily, Peter, Marlene, Dorcas, Caradoc, Benjy, and the many others who had died before setting down roots in the world. Remus had thought of Wales drenched in rain and his dad all alone in their brick council house, and Remus had convinced Sirius to buy a flat in Cardiff. 

It had not been a long term plan, not really. Everyone had died and things had changed. They changed slowly, at first. Regulus had died first, followed by Sirius’s father, and Sirius had retreated into strange, disconnected grief and came out a different person. Then came 1980, and the Prewetts died along with Benjy, and then Caradoc had disappeared. Everyone else had died in 1981. And Remus had nowhere left to go.

He had not had a home, because home had been friends and friends were in the afterlife. So he had stayed with his dad in Wrexham. He’d moved to a village near Manchester, gotten a Muggle job, attempted suicide. Hospital stays, occasional months spent living with his dad that became fewer and fewer as Remus isolated himself, living in poverty, leaving his room maybe three times a week, constantly burdened by thoughts of harming himself and ghosts, so many ghosts.

How many dreams had he had where Sirius had lain next to him in bed, just like this, arms behind his head and a thoughtful expression on his handsome face? Sirius would turn to him and apologize; Sirius would turn to him and tell him the truth. When morning came, he would dissolve into nothing but a bad dream.

“Do you know what?” Remus asks.

“Mmm?”

“I hate England too.” 

“Glad we aren’t there, eh?”

“I don’t think we can leave just yet.” Sirius doesn’t look over at Remus but falls silent, clear eyes still focused on the dark ceiling. “Sirius, you  _ know  _ that he’s coming back.” 

“You don’t.”

“Yes, I do. We all do. You can’t deny it.” 

“Well, let’s be in Cambodia for when he gets back.” Crickets chirp in the silence that Remus leaves to permeate after Sirius speaks those selfish words. “I’m not joking, Remus. We gave up everything last time. I’m not doing it again.”

“You wouldn’t stay and fight for Harry?” Sirius abandons his open position and rolls over in bed, with his back to Remus. “Nice, Sirius. Very brave.”

Muffled by the blanket: “Thank you.”

“Jesus Christ, be that way.”

“You and your fucking pessimism ruin everything.” 

“Thank  _ you _ .” Remus lays down with his back to Sirius. They lie in mirrored positions.

Neither of them know that in a few weeks time, Remus will be proven invariably correct. And there will not be a choice of whether or not to return. It’s the choice between what is easy and what is right. They’ve faced it before and it  _ had  _ been simple, back when they were seventeen and thought that they could conquer anything.

It’s harder now. Oh, god, it is so much harder.


	10. I Don't Want to Live Like This

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> quick note, i'm definitely not condoning some of remus’s choices in this / underage smoking lmao. he’s a product of the 70s and also doesn't exactly know how to parent. 
> 
> cw for discussions of suicide & depression.

_ Sirius, _

_ Not to alarm you or anything, but something really bad happened. I don’t exactly know what to do anymore. Cedric died and I think it might’ve been my fault. Not quite sure how else to tell you, but Voldemort is back. I know this will worry you and I’m sorry, but I can tell you about it better in person. _

_ I’m sorry. _

_ Harry _

It seems that things are better.

They live in a house by the sea and they are touched by the sunshine at least once a day, for the wind always carries the clouds along. The grey is never permanent, not like the way it settled heavy and dark over the country in Wales, inner London, the Scottish Highlands, Cardiff. Places they’ve been together, then apart, then back together again as though fate cannot leave the pair of them alone.

Then a letter comes from Harry.

Delivered at the breakfast table where Sirius had been cutting up a mango. He likes putting Tajín on fruit, says it adds character. Sirius drops the letter down on the counter and doesn’t touch it until Remus picks it up. Half of it is soaked by water spotted across the counter, and the ink is smearing.

“It’s from Harry.” Sirius is still trying to turn the mango into something reminiscent of an edible arrangement and looks up distractedly.

“Oh, Harry! Must be news about the Triwizard Cup! Read it to me!” Remus gently slides his fingers along the envelope, teasing it open, and glances over the letter. A weight sinks in his stomach. “Moony, what is it? What happened? Did he win?” Remus has no words for it. Harry has grossly understated a good number of things, first being his friend’s death and second being the return of Lord Voldemort himself. Jesus  _ Christ.  _ “Moony? Remus? Hey, what’s wrong?”

Remus hands the letter out.

**-**

Harry arrives the next day.

His face is drawn and his eyes dull. There’s a dark red scar along his cheek that wasn’t there before. His hair is much too long, grown all the way down his neck, sort of like how James’s looked in 1975. Harry is smaller then his father: shorter, slighter. He’s very thin. 

Remus hangs back warily as Harry hugs Sirius. He holds onto his godfather as though Sirius might disappear if they let go of each other. This seems a scene a bit too personal for him to be looking in on. Remus turns and moves into the kitchen, catches a glimpse of the ocean, takes a breath, and then puts on the kettle.

The news had not come only from Harry, in fact it had come from everyone all at once. Dumbledore and Tonks had sent them letters and the Daily Prophet already had its front page spread: Cedric Diggory’s seventeen year old face in black and white but moving, he smiled at the camera and Remus had felt sick just looking at the photo and knowing that the boy was dead. And Harry had been there.

Remus knows how it feels to watch your best friends die because he’s seen it happen a few times in varying degrees of gore and heartbreak, but he hadn’t been fourteen and on the verge of winning the Triwizard Tournament. Dumbledore’s letter had gone into most detail, but even then, the story had been rather sparse. 

Apparently, the Triwizard Cup had been a Portkey. Harry and Cedric had both touched the cup, diamond blue and glimmering enticingly on that warm summer night, and they’d been whirled away to a graveyard. Cedric hadn’t even had time to realize what had happened before his life had been ended by Peter Pettigrew. And then Harry gets tortured, a million cowardly Death Eaters show up but don’t show their faces and they watch as a fourteen year old boy is reduced to shards of nothing before their eyes, and then Remus isn’t clear on what happened next.

Voldemort had not killed Harry, and Harry hadn’t killed him. Dumbledore had been quite clandestine about the ending of what had happened in the graveyard. Remus knows the clear ending: Harry reappears on Hogwarts grounds sobbing, clutching Cedric’s lifeless body, and they couldn’t pull him off until Amos Diggory forced him. 

Alastor Moody had been Barty Crouch Jr. all along. Voldemort is back. Dumbledore is reviving the Order. And Remus Lupin is standing in his kitchen making tea. He brings out the mugs to Sirius and Harry. Joey sits with his head in Harry’s lap, and Harry pets him distantly as he quiets down once Remus walks in, holding out the mug. It’s silent, now. 

Remus knows that he is now expected to leave and go for a walk, or go lie in his bedroom, or go do nothing helpful. He sits down in a thrifted armchair across from the sofa, and Sirius gives him a nearly imperceptible smile of gratitude. 

Harry, his face tearstained and upset, says in a thick voice, “I’m not starting from the beginning.”

“No one’s asking you to,” Remus tells him gently. Harry heaves a shuddering breath. 

“Well,” He says. “Wormtail got his brilliant new hand. Death Eaters showed up- Malfoy, Macnair, Crabbe, Goyle. Voldemort called it his ‘rebirthing party’,” And he laughs shrilly. “Gave a fucking speach about what he’d been up to, told us what happened to Bertha Jorkins, and he’d killed her. Of course. Hit me with the Cruciartus, then, and then he made me duel him.” Sirius listens quietly but intently. Harry drinks some of his tea.

“They were fucking  _ laughing  _ at me. The Death Eaters. He used the Imperius to make me bow, and they laughed.” Among everything that had happened, this seems like an odd memory to fixate on. Tears are falling down Harry’s face and he does not acknowledge them. His voice remains rather steady. “And how can you duel someone using the Unforgivables?”

“He used them multiple times?” Sirius’s voice is very quiet.

“Yes,  _ Crucio _ -ed me and then used the Imperius to ask me to do it again. He wanted me to ask to be tortured.” Sirius lowers his head. “But I didn’t. I wouldn’t. And I hid, I  _ hid  _ because he let me go and then I knew…” Harry is crying into his tea and he puts the mug on the table, sniffs, and pets Joey for comfort. “I knew I was going to die, and then he tried, he cast  _ Avada  _ and I just- all I could think of was  _ Expelliarmus _ .” Remus knows how it feels to have your mind go blank in the middle of battle, a brainless panic. 

“And then the weird shit happened. Priori Incantatem, or whatever Dumbledore called it. All the ghosts of people he killed came out of his wand. Cedric,” Harry’s voice wobbles over the name, “And Bertha Jorkins, and my parents. My mum and dad. They saved me, they helped me again. Bought me time. They spoke to me.” Harry covers his face with his hands. Joey whines for more affection and Harry says “Sorry” in his choked voice. Remus doesn’t know if he’s apologizing to the dog or to them, for the tears.

“I’ve just- I’ve never spoken to them before. I only saw them in the mirror, first year.” Remus knows about the Mirror of Erised because Harry had explained it to him last year. He had been using it as a Patronus memory at first. James and Lily and his whole family. A family that could have been. “But we never spoke. And my mum, and my dad… I’ve always just wanted to talk to them, just  _ talk,  _ and the only time I get to is when I’m about to fucking  _ die,  _ at the hands of Voldemort, and, you know, I really wish I had!” 

“Harry, don’t say that-”

Harry swears again and wraps his arms around himself while Joey nudges him for more pets. He’d been making shaky eye contact with Sirius but now just stares down at Joey as he speaks. 

“It’s just… I just don’t understand, I don’t see why I lived. As a kid, even, why I had to live, why didn’t… I know my mum died for me, to keep me alive, but she shouldn’t have, she shouldn’t have. Was it even worth it? I haven’t- I hadn’t had a single happy memory until I was eleven years old! If Voldemort got me back when I was a kid, none of this would have happened.  _ None  _ of it. Cedric wouldn’t have died, my mum wouldn’t have died, Sirius-” Harry looks up at Sirius, and says, “You wouldn’t have gone to Azkaban, and you- everything- it would have all been  _ fine,  _ and it’s all my fault and I don’t know how to fix it, I can’t ever be sorry enough, I don’t know how to fix it, I’m just so sorry…”

Sirius finally reaches out for Harry and pulls him close to hug him. Harry gives in and sort of seems to collapse, all of the upset energy leaving him as he holds onto Sirius and cries into his hair. Sirius looks wide eyed at Remus, who has absolutely no idea what to do.

So Sirius says, “It’s not your fault, Harry. You don’t have to be sorry. It’s could never be your fault.”

**-**

Sirius hides the knives.

He removes the razors from the bathroom and stashes Remus’s medication bottles in his nightstand drawer rather than scattered across assorted countertops. Remus feels as powerless as ever before. Harry had spent the rest of the day shut up in his room and had been given a pass on dinner.

“He’s so thin, too,” Sirius worries out loud as he and Remus sit in the living room. “God, Remus, I don’t know what to do. What do you think? You have more experience with this.”

“I don’t know either.” Remus is quiet, thoughtful. He’s sure that Harry might be hanging about eavesdropping and doesn’t want to say anything incriminating. 

“What if he tries? What if he tries to kill himself?”

“Sirius, I don’t know.”

“He’s convinced that he doesn’t deserve to be alive!”

“I know.”

“Are you going to help, at all, or are you just going to sit there and be useless?”

“ _ Sirius _ .” Sirius breathes out heavily. “I’m going to… I’m going to write it down, okay?”

“Why don’t we just  _ talk _ ?”

“Just be patient, Pads, okay? Just keep calm and be patient. Go walk Joey, or take Ziggy out, I don’t know, I don’t-... I don’t know.” Remus cuts himself off before he can let loose the infamous  _ I don’t care,  _ but the look on Sirius’s face has already taken offense. He does take Joey, anyways, and slams the door on his way out of the house.

Which is just fucking perfect. They haven’t done anywhere near enough as parents to help prevent this, this horror which Remus somehow knew was inevitable. Because despite it all, no one ever blamed Harry. Not Sirius in Azkaban, or Remus alone, and Lily would have  _ never.  _

How could a baby be to blame? In what world is Harry Potter the one at fault?

His own world. It’s easy to blame yourself when bad things keep happening, but Voldemort is the one who’s ruined everyone's lives. It’s sickening how one person can ruin so, so many lives. Stretching lifetimes. Incredible and awful beyond comparison. 

And now Sirius is convinced that Harry’s on the brink of a suicidal breakdown and Remus, expert on depression, is the one who’s supposed to find a solution to a rather unsolvable problem.

So Remus writes down some thoughts.

_ what i would have wanted to hear: _

Remus stares at the paper for a good long while.

_ someone will never be the same without me in their life.  _

_ i bring someone joy, comfort, relief.  _

_ i am important to others. i am valuable. i am loved. i am worthwhile.  _

_ i am _ years old and this so far is a tiny percentage of my whole life. one day i’ll be fifty and looking back on this and the hurt will seem so far away.  _

_ if you take it day by day then one day you’ll realize that it’s stopped hurting so much. and one day it will barely hurt at all anymore.  _

That’s the most Remus can come up with by the time Sirius gets back from his walk. He smells heady, like weed smoke, and his footsteps are uncertain. Remus watches him struggle to balance against the wall to unlace his boots and then give up, sitting down on the floor to wrench them off. He goes down and does not come back up.

“Sirius, what are you doing?” Remus stands and wanders over to where Sirius is lying on the floor next to Joey. He sighs.

“Processing.”

“I wrote some things.” Remus drops the paper down onto Sirius. It lands on his chest and he picks it up, holding it over his head. Remus watches him mouth the words silently as he reads them.

Sirius sits up, stands up, and then hugs Remus. His hair smells like the spicy warmth of marijuana and the rest just like leather and home. Sirius kisses the scar on his jaw, and then his lips.

“Moony, how many times did you try?”

“What?”

“How many times did you… did you attempt?” Sirius detaches himself from the hug and passes the paper back to Remus before continuing on into the kitchen as though this is a casual conversation. Remus follows warily.

“Twice. Twice seriously.”

“I only knew of the first.” 

The first had been in the winter of sixth year. Sirius and Remus had been at horrible, icy odds because Sirius had tried turning Remus into a murderer and Remus had really not known how to cope. Before holidays, Remus’s dad had written him asking to come home for Christmas and Remus had agreed. But the depression had been incredible. Remus had a real issue with getting out of bed, and had missed the Hogwarts Express. James and Sirius had been at the Potters’ for Christmas. 

Remus had cast a few Severing Charms on his wrist and they had been deep enough to show bone. Peter had found him bleeding out in bed. Cast his best healing spells and then dragged him down to Madam Pomfrey to fix the rest of the damage. Remus had held it against him for a long time. 

The second time had been in a Muggle village and Remus had been twenty three. He’d drank a lot of liquor, eaten a lot of pills, and passed out in the snow. Frozen half to death in the night and woken up in hospital and he had still been alive, unkillable, and hopeless to the finest degree.

“Yeah, well, you weren’t around. It was a long time ago.”

“I’m sorry.” Sirius looks straight at him for a moment. His eyes are red, a little hazy, but clear enough to understand. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you.” Remus mumbles something related to forgiveness, very quietly, and Sirius hugs him again before pulling away and giving in to the distractions of being high. He says, “You should talk to Harry” while he sticks a pot on the stove and swirls a variable amount of oil onto it while Remus watches in fear. “You’re better at these things.”

“Listen, just because I’ve felt suicidal doesn’t mean I know how to talk about it.” Sirius raises his eyebrows in silent protest and starts digging around in the pantry while Remus watches in powerless confusion. “What are you doing?”

“Making popcorn.”

“Sirius, just use the microwave.”

“I don’t understand it.”

“Don’t be daft, come on. You’re going to burn the house down!” 

“I would have done by now, Moony, have some faith in me.” They argue, and Remus convinces him to make the stupid popcorn in the microwave instead. Sirius, sleepy hungry and stoned, takes his bowl of popcorn into the bedroom and Remus follows hesitantly behind. The smell of popcorn and butter permeates the house and Remus wonders if this was an indirect effort to get Harry inspired to eat some food.

They stay up late talking. Not about Harry so much anymore. About the Order. Sirius and Remus want to organize a meeting with Dumbledore but both of them agree that maybe they shouldn’t leave Harry alone in the house for the time being. Sirius, whether he’s aware of it or not, keeps asking Remus for indirect advice on how to deal with Harry as though he’s a problem rather than a person.

“Sirius, the best thing to do is act like you’ve always acted. He’s still your godson. Treat him just the same.”

“But I’m  _ worried _ .”

“Yes, of course, but you clearly have no idea how to talk to him about it.”

“Will you?” And Remus would have said  _ absolutely not  _ in terms of having some sort of small Harry-intervention if not for his uncertain morals. Once upon a time, Remus had told his dad that he’d been thinking of ending things and his dad had not come to check in on him before he went to bed that night. His dad had never checked in on him.

Sirius falls asleep and so Remus goes and sees if Harry is still awake. There is nothing that hurts more than going to bed and knowing that no one has cared enough to at least say goodnight. It is dark blue and closed blinds. Aching loneliness.

Harry’s door, surprisingly, is cracked and Remus assumes he’s been casually eavesdropping on them. Remus silently steps into the doorway to see Harry sitting at the small desk in his room, writing. A letter, or if Remus is morbid enough then maybe a suicide note. The words written on paper in his pocket burn. 

“Harry.” Harry turns, instantly slamming a book on top of the paper he’s writing, and looking quite defensive at the sight of Remus standing in the doorway. “I, er, wanted to talk.” Harry opens his mouth, then closes it, and he looks somewhat afraid. “We can sit outside, if you like. I wanted a smoke.”

“Okay.” Harry follows behind him quite reluctantly. Remus snatches Sirius' dark cigarette case from off the counter and flicks it open between his fingers as Harry lets the door slam behind him by accident. He doesn’t apologize. Quiet as he sits down, green eyes flickering interestedly as Remus picks a hand rolled spliff from Sirius’s collection. He hands it to Harry.

“No  _ way _ .”

“You deserve it.”

“You’re the best!”

“Don’t tell Sirius.” 

“Would never. Can you light it?” Remus obliges and Harry crosses his eyes as he puffs on the spliff. Remus lights a cigarette and tonight, decides to ignore the persistent ache in his lungs that hurts worse and worse as the years wear on. They smoke in silence for a while. Remus is bad at initiating things and it’s only humorous that Harry asks, 

“So what did you want to talk about?”

It’s probably clear from what had happened earlier, but Harry asks anyways in false hope that maybe Remus will talk about something else. 

“I just wanted to check in, like.”

“About…?”

“Neither Sirius or I want to wake up one morning and find you dead, or anything.” Harry has the gall to laugh. 

“Damn, Remus, don’t be so bleak!”

“I’m only telling you the truth, Harry. You sounded pretty torn up, earlier.”

“I’m not going to kill myself.” Remus hates how often those words are thrown around in his house. “Only I’m just having a hard time. And sometimes I can’t find the reasons why I  _ should  _ be alive. I mean, humor me here, wouldn’t things be simpler if I died?”

“I think things would be a lot more complicated if you killed yourself, Harry.” So Harry falls silent behind the glowing orange end of the spliff. “I tried to, twice, when I was younger. It didn’t help anything.”

“Might’ve if you’d succeeded.” Remus stares up faster than he’d meant to and Harry says, “Fuck, I did not mean that. I’m so sorry. Jesus Christ. I don’t know where that came from. I’m just projecting, I’m sorry.”

“And you’re right, Harry, maybe things would have been better if I’d gotten it right. But I went to the hospital, after the second time, and that helped.” Remus lets the undertones permeate.

“I don’t want to be in hospital.”

“No one’s saying you have to. It’s just… if you actually feel like… dying, then it helps.” Harry lowers his head. Smoke curls out to form a halo around his untidy hair. 

“What do they do? What happens? What helps?”

“Therapy. Talking to other people. Meds, if you need them. You’re taught how to live properly, healthily. And it’s not a last-ditch option, Harry. It’s not the last effort. If you feel like you need to go, then please, tell me. We only want to help you.” 

“I don’t know how to… be helped. I just don’t think I’m destined to have a long life. Not really.” Remus has felt the exact same way so many times and it hurts to think about. 

“Harry, I’ve felt just the same. I thought I would be dead before twenty. Even now…” He trails off and abandons that line of thinking. “I had no idea Sirius would come back. I didn’t think I’d ever get a proper job, or live in a nice house like this- I didn’t think it was possible for me to have a good life. I don’t know if you feel the same, but I’m telling you that one day you look back, you have hindsight and you think  _ damn,  _ I sort of made it.

“Sort of?”

“Yeah, sort of.” Remus doesn’t elaborate, but the look on Harry’s face says he should. From his own experience in life, Remus finds that adults are very much least likely to discuss topics such as mental health and their own personal weaknesses with each other and with children, even though there is so much reason to be open. 

Instead, Remus does something completely awful and says: “It’s very late.” Harry does not look crestfallen but at least something close to it. Remus rubs a hand over his face and feels immeasurably exhausted, although Harry could definitely fight him on who’s more tired and win. 

Harry doesn’t ask any more. They stand up and go to bed. Remus stands for a moment in Harry’s doorway, curious about the letter on his desk, and says:

“Harry, if you ever feel like you seriously need help, please come to me or Sirius. It might feel awkward, but it’s much better than going it alone.”

“Okay. Thank you.”

Remus pauses, feeling like there has to be something left to say. What would James say?  _ I love you, Harry, and you are so important to me.  _ Remus wonders if anyone’s told Harry that they love him.

“We really care about you.”

“Yeah, I know. Thank you. Goodnight, Remus.” Harry walks up to the door to shut it and so Remus takes a few steps back and suddenly there’s a door in his face. Well, then. Remus retreats to his own bedroom. 

Sirius is fast asleep. He’s passed out in his normal clothes, chest rising and falling under his dark t-shirt. Remus still cannot believe that he’s here. Sometimes it feels like a fever dream, one of those where Remus had fallen asleep and Sirius had returned, lain next to him in bed at night, been there at all. Remus had woken from these dreams and Sirius is finally here.

They fall asleep next to each other as they had fourteen, fifteen years ago when things hadn’t been so wrong. When James Potter’s son is not living in their house and blaming himself for the death of his parents and friends. When the future had been wide open, when they had always said “ _ When this is all over _ ”; hopeful, bright eyed, fucking naive and ignorant about how their world was going to be torn apart. 

It’s happening again. That’s the worst part, that Voldemort is back. And Harry of all people had been the one to witness it. Poor, young Harry who has been through too much in his fourteen, almost fifteen years of life. Remus remembers what he said:  _ I hadn’t had a single happy memory until I was eleven years old!  _ and realizes that he relates to Harry more than he can know. That Sirius does too. 

So why, then, are they so incapable of explaining to Harry that he’s not the only one who has felt like this? Like, like there might be a few people who care but in the long run, what’s the point? If Voldemort wants to kill me, why don’t I just let him and save the lives of the people who will die fighting for me?

Remus’s question and main plan of action do not involve Harry Potter dying. Not on his watch, or Sirius’s, or those strange ghosts of his best friends. Remus wants to know why Voldemort seems impossible to kill. 

And once Remus finds that out, he is going to kill him. Properly, this time. Maybe with a bit of tact, if the situation is right. And he won’t ever come back. Not ever. 


	11. But I Don't Want To Die

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just a heads up- i changed the name of this! it always happens sooner or later when i get deep into a fic and i like this one a lot. fits my wolfstar vibes. this might be my favorite chapter i've ever written of anything (the ending gets me hard) so i hope you enjoy.
> 
> also, i'm still figuring out the length of this thing, but i'm planning on a happy ending so it might end up around 30 or so chapters. i'm gonna dive deep into this and canon is going to get pretty blurry after, like... now. but thank u for bearing with me because i have the end to this written which means i must follow through until then!  
> (cw for mentions of suicide & depression but it's pretty brief)

_ The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches. Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies… and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not… and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives… the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies… _

  
  


Harry attends breakfast the next morning and says quite formally from behind a sleepless face: “I’m sorry about crying all over you yesterday, that was ridiculous.”

“Not at all,” Sirius tells him. “I’m always free to cry on. I cry on Remus all the time. It’s only healthy.” Harry just makes a strange face and moves his cereal around in the bowl. Remus has music playing in the background and is glad for it to fill the silence. “Harry, anything you want to do? Anywhere you want to go? Work hasn’t been too busy so I’m sure I could get a few days off if you’d like to take a trip… we could see the sights of the U.K.! Loch Ness, Stonehenge, oh! We could see the Kelpies…” Harry glances at Remus, who just shrugs as Sirius continues listing landmarks.

Remus wouldn’t mind joining them on an impulse trip to Loch Ness if he hadn’t written to Dumbledore last night and organized a meeting with him today. 

Sirius had been too high last night to discuss anything coherent and now seems set on avoiding any topics related to Harry’s breakdown or, indeed, the fact that Voldemort has returned once and for all with Peter fucking Pettigrew as his right hand man. It disturbs Remus more than words can account for, and meeting with Dumbledore seems like only the right thing to do.

Otherwise, he’d take it up with Fudge himself. Remus is angry. Sirius might be too, but he is clearly wary about taking action, while Remus will not sit back and let the world fall apart before his eyes, god, not again. The sooner someone, anyone, does something ( _ anything _ ), the safer they will be. 

Remus does the washing up after breakfast while Harry and Sirius discuss either their plans for the day or the lack thereof; Harry seems understandably subdued and only brightens when Sirius explains to everyone that they’re going to take a ride on his motorcycle. Remus tells them both to be careful and is promptly ignored. 

Once they’ve left, anxiety creeps into Remus’s bones, and he paces around the house while reciting what he’s going to say to Dumbledore. None of his words make any sense out of his mouth so he shuts it. He’s come to learn that silence can be more valuable than anything else. He pets Joey, plays with him, and spoils him with a treat just because. That makes time pass a little faster. 

Dumbledore is apparently still at Hogwarts, doing so-called ‘maintenance’, which makes Remus heartily suspicious. It’s been a long time since anything about Dumbledore  _ hadn’t  _ caused near-immediate suspicion. (Remus is also suspicious about who the new Defense teacher will be. And he’s also planning on bringing that up to Dumbledore. Tactfully, of course.)

—

Standing below Dumbledore’s office and making friends with his twin gargoyles remind Remus of his youth. He’d honestly never been called to Dumbledore for his pranks, that had been all Sirius, but he had his fair share of serious discussions in this office and is rather dreading the interaction as he climbs the spiral steps to the headmaster’s office. He pushes open the door to Dumbledore’s grand, high ceilinged office, and doesn’t even take a moment to look around at the moving portraits in awe, as he would have as a child.

“Good to see you, Remus.” Dumbledore stands and shakes his hand while Remus wishes he could say the same. 

“Thank you for meeting with me. I have… a lot of questions.” Dumbledore doesn’t have to say that he lacks any answers, but he enlightens Remus either way. And, well, Remus really lays into him. 

“... A  _ fourteen  _ year old, allowed in a deadly tournament despite his age. A Death Eater disguised as a professor for an entire year, practicing Unforgivable Curses in his classroom, on his  _ students,  _ I mean, Albus- this was a pretty bad year for you.” Albus regards him coolly. Remus can feel him trying to press at the edges of his mind but Remus had practiced his Occlumency to hell and beyond during the war, and so his mind is and will always be closed off. Even against the greatest wizard in the country.

Dumbledore has a multitude of manipulative excuses to provide about why he’s not to blame for all the shit that happened this year, and then he says to Remus in order to change the topic to something a million times more awful:

“I need your help in reviving the Order. Now that Voldemort is back, we need to start building ranks. If we wait to act, he will gain power even faster than before. He already has his old Death Eaters-

“No.” Remus feels no shame in cutting him off. He says very sharply and again, “No. The Order does not need to be revived. Not how it was last time. You need to explain to me  _ why  _ you want the Order back.”

“And I am curious about why you think you are entitled to this explanation. I have already repaid you for any debt that I might have been in from the war.” Dumbledore regards him evenly and Remus feels his face heat up. “Voldemort is back, Remus. Isn’t that reason enough?”

“And right away, your first instinct is to create an Order where more than half the members will die? Because I’m not putting my life on the line, not again, and neither is Sirius.”

“I need your help.”

“I’m not giving it.” 

“You were so eager to fight last time, Remus, don’t you remember? You wanted to do what was right for a cause. ‘If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have taken the side of the oppressor.’” What the fuck is this old codger talking about? 

“My side is never the same as yours, Albus. I’m not even valid in the world of… humans.”

“You’re as human as I am.”

“Nearly there, but not  _ quite  _ close enough.” Remus’s tone is bitter. “To be honest, I don’t fancy dying as much as I used to, you know? Especially when I have-” A number of words flicker around his brain that don’t make any sense out loud, and he just says, “Harry.” 

“Harry.”

“Who you’ve done a  _ number _ on, by the way. Lifelong trauma thanks to your ineptitude.” Dumbledore has the prudence not to reply. “He has a family now, and I will not take us away from him because you want us to fight. Everyone I loved died, last time, Albus, everyone but me.” Remus’s voice shakes on the last word. “And what kids will you have fighting for you this time? The Weasley twins? Alicia Spinnet? Roger Davies? I was in my sixth year when you had me join.”

“You and your friends were very enthusiastic at the time.”

“And all my friends died.” There’s a stretching silence in between them. Albus looks at a small bowl on his desk and Remus could swear that he would  _ kill  _ him if offered a fucking mint right now. 

“Remus, Voldemort is back. He is  _ back _ , and out for blood. Things are going to be exactly the same if we don’t act now.”

“But-”

“They will, Remus. Everything will eventually develop into the way it once was. It will be war once again.”

“But I don’t-” Remus cuts himself off before he can say ‘I don’t  _ want  _ there to be another war’ as though he is a child instead of a fully grown man who lost everything,  _ everything,  _ in the last war against this awful dark power who seems set on tearing a good world apart. “Albus, I don’t think it has to be this way.”

“What other way can it be?”

“How can we kill Voldemort?” Dumbledore hesitates, that much is clear. His face is for once uncertain. Then he starts talking.

—

Remus Lupin has survived some of the worst things in the world and sits in the sun, now, eyes closed and lets it warm him from the inside out. There are simple things and there are ways to go on, even when it seems like the world has deserted you forever and that’s it, that’s all, that’s everything and the end.

A deep breath in and he’s drinking the sun, a deep breath out and he wipes tears from the waterline of his eye. The day is warm, early summer and a breeze carries through from the sea. Remus wears a t-shirt so the mutilation on his arms is clear to see. And yet, a simple pleasure. Sit in the sun like a cat drawing warmth and there’s salt in the air from the sea, and a blue sky and white clouds.

Remus has a notebook in his lap and a stubborn lump in his throat. The notebook details the prophecy, and as much information on Horcruxes as his mind can come up with. Could come up with. The last few lines are hastily rushed, words unreadable and ink blurring, because Remus had had a panic attack maybe twenty minutes ago and had sat in his chair sobbing, shaking, unable to breathe and it’s

over? It’s gone. It’s done. He can breathe again, in daylight at least. Except he can’t keep his dead friends off of his mind, especially the ones that no one else knows about. 

Take a childhood friend with a few silver teeth who lives down the road in a council house that matches Remus’s room for room, name him something Welsh like Rhys, or something, and make him grow up to be handsome and kind. He’ll kiss Remus on the neck in an impulsive, vampiric motion, in the summer of 1974 and Remus will write letters to him and talk on the phone, sometimes, and winters and summers they experiment with each other.

And even when Remus and Sirius started dating, and even when Rhys sleeps with too many people to count, they are in love. The kind of love that starts in youth and is too innocent, pure, vibrant to ever let go of. They will never hurt each other. Friends first, lovers later, slash that and stick to friends. 

And, well. Rhys was always loose. Called Remus crying one day in 1984 and said “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry” and Remus said “I’m sorry, too” because what can you do now when your last best friend living gets AIDS? Fucking death sentence, they called it the ‘gay plague’, and Remus didn’t even visit him in hospital because Remus Lupin is a coward, and Rhys had died anyways and that had been the end of that, then.

Remus hasn’t thought about him in a long time and had been underprepared, to say the least, for the emotions that would arise when genuinely thinking about another life lost. And rewriting that prophecy, the most terrible prophecy, that he has memorized and now flashes through black ink on the parchment in front of him… 

Remus will never forget the night when James and Lily finally got the prophecy out of Dumbledore.

An August that came in the form of a heatwave, and the Potters’ house had been sweltering. Windows open. Lily had sat on the sofa with baby Harry in her arms and James paced around behind her. Mary sat next to Lily, sometimes smiling or making a funny face at Harry. Remus and Sirius had sat side by side on the other sofa, knees touching. Peter had been hovering nervously. 

“We’re targets,” James explained while Lily watched him pace with weary eyes. “There was a prophecy and-  _ he  _ thinks it’s about Harry.” There had been a Taboo on Voldemort’s name in those days. 

Many times, Sirius had accidentally said it, thinking himself too cool to give in to calling him a nickname based out of fear. He’d said it once, all drunken after a night out and in a dark London street, there had been loud cracks all around them and Remus had grabbed onto Sirius in fear of an ambush, Disapparating. Yet you can be tracked when you Apparate. So they had Apparated once, twice, three times and then four, spinning wildly all over the country until they had turned up on a rainy street in Cardiff and Remus’s head had spun while Sirius stumbled aside to throw up.

Despite the awful dizzy nausea, Remus had still been terrified that they had been followed. That had been around the time when he moved out of their flat. Sirius had grown careless.

So there was a prophecy, and Lily had written it down after her and James had shouted at Dumbledore enough for them to be considered entitled enough to hear it. The small piece of scrap paper had drifted from hand to hand around the living room.

There had been a good few minutes of silence while the paper was passed around and everyone was left to make sense of what they had just read.

“But wait, hold on, Alice and Frank had their baby in July, too.” Remus had spoken up almost right after reading it. “Little Neville. His birthday is the same as Harry’s, isn’t it?”

“The day before.” Lily’s voice had been trembling and afraid. “The Longbottoms are in hiding too.” 

“But-but- thrice defied? Alice and Frank are Aurors, they’ve met Vo- they’ve met  _ him  _ more than you have, they’ve  _ defied  _ him more than you have- this doesn’t make any sense!”

Sirius, who had been brooding rather quietly, added his own question: “How does You-Know-Who know that you have Harry, anyways?” They had all stared around at each other wide eyed. 

And of course, there had been no answers. How hopelessly naive they had been, thinking that they could trust each other. And it had broken Remus’s heart when they’d considered  _ him  _ the spy, when they had shut him out and pushed him away from their little family that he’d once been a part of; what else could they have done? Could you blame them? Could Remus?

Alas, those days, there was nowhere left to place blame. 

Nowhere except Albus Dumbledore who, thirteen years later, is still ruining lives left and right with less regard than anyone could have ever expected from someone so  _ responsible! _ Remus leans back in his chair and closes his eyes. He needs a distraction, something other than the sun or the fucking breeze. He needs his Sirius, who is off distracting someone else at the moment.

Their little family is so incredibly fucked up. Three out of the four of them have PTSD at this point and Remus, well. Remus has had a long life. Longer than thirty five years. He’s not sure that the consequences of moving will be, and so he stays on his chair in the sun until Sirius comes home.

—

“Moony. Moony.” It’s colder than it had been and darker, now, too. Remus curls into himself before he realizes he’s not in bed and then, before any clear waking thought can come to his mind, there’s a heavy weight on his lap that smells like smoke and Sirius.

“Ugh, gerroff!” Remus startles awake and Sirius is trying to make himself comfortable on his lap. Remus is still in the beach chair out back, only the sun is on its way to setting and there’s a cool chill in the air. “Why are you sitting on my lap?”

Sirius kisses his neck and says, “Because I love you?”

“Lap dog.”

“You wound me.” Sirius shifts his weight again, moving around so he’s sort of straddling Remus, and kisses him again. He nibbles at Remus’s scratchy jaw, puts pressure on a thick scar there, and then finds his mouth. Remus kisses back, sitting up straighter, wishing he had some control instead of Sirius sitting on top of him like this.

Sirius gets the hint and pulls back. His eyes are lively, his grin sharp.

“Harry’s out, you know. I bought him a bike.

“A  _ what _ ?!” Remus’s overworked, paranoid mind immediately flashes to young Harry riding a motorbike characteristic of the one Sirius had fixed up at seventeen while knowing absolutely no road laws, and don’t even ask him about what to do upon encountering a low flying aeroplane. 

“Bicycle!” Sirius grins cheerfully. “Told him to go explore Penzance, or whatever…” He quirks his eyebrows. A silent invitation. 

They’re crashing through the house in seconds: hands in hair, skin on skin, breaths sharp and fast and gasping, desperate, though patient all at once. Remus pushes Sirius down on the bed and turns the tables, straddling him instead, shucking off his trousers and palming him, waiting, hoping, wishing.

And Sirius is hard after all, smiling in some sort of odd triumph that says  _ look at me, I’m not broken after all,  _ and when Remus touches him there, touches him properly like they haven’t done in however long, Sirius dissolves into him.

Afterwards, Sirius is brimming with energy.

“Let’s go watch the sunset! Let’s bake something delicious! Let’s go for a second round! Let’s vacation to Spain on my magical flying motorbike!” Remus pacifies him; they compromise by taking Joey down to the craggy beach of English coast that winds down way beneath their house. It’s a longer walk than it should be, because a sharp downhill climb leaves Remus’s legs shaking and seizing up. He sits down on the sand while Sirius and Joey walk a bit down the coast.

Joey is hesitant about the water and wades a few pawsteps in. He leans down as a small wave bubbles up to him, sniffs it, and it wets his nose. He barks in surprise, pawing at his nose, and then starts barking at the water. Sirius laughs out loud. He loves the sea, the ocean, gets lost in it like he is young and he looks taller but smaller at the same time as Remus watches him follow Joey down the beach.

Sirius wears a black hoodie, jeans, and no shoes. Often, Remus will catch him doing something so small like just  _ standing  _ and he will be completely shocked by Sirius’s presence, here, in 1995, wearing Muggle clothes and standing on the beach and playing with his dog named after a punk rocker. And wasn’t this what they were always supposed to be? Isn’t this where they were supposed to be all along?

It would never have turned out this way without the war. Not without Voldemort, or their best friends dying. Not without thirteen years apart. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, isn’t that true? Remus’s heart had been cold and fucking nothing at all when it came to Sirius Black, and then he had reappeared in an Azkaban uniform, bony hands on Remus’s arm, eyes still bright as though not even the Dementors could have extinguished his soul.

What kind of spirit can survive something so awful? The both of them, too? Remus had been so ready to take it all away forever and again. 1976, 1983, and he’s just as immortal as Voldemort. He’s been tearing himself apart for the past thirty years and all he has to show for it is a lifetime of scars, pain potions, silver chains, and headaches. 

Sirius grew up abused, grew up hated, had a few good years to himself and then awful and immeasurable sadness beyond anything you’ve ever known. Remus mentally locked himself into a jail cell to match. For some reason, they have both survived. They’re not nearly as fucked up as they could be. Sirius could have been kissed by a Dementor in the end, left in a hospital room with nothing and nothing and nothing forever.

Remus could have been the first one dead. Last one to heaven is a rotten egg, and Remus had tried back in sixth year. His suicide attempts have never been his best work. Only when he is too depressed, so catatonic that everything seems out of reach and there’s not even light at the end of the tunnel, just an amber glow… he only tried it when there was no energy for anything else. 

Remus rests his chin in his hands and watches Sirius. His back is turned to Remus, but his posture and movements show all there is to know; happiness, joy. Sirius leans down and pats his thighs as an invitation for Joey to come, and Joey leaps on him all sandy paws and wet fur; Remus would have scolded him but Sirius just laughs and tells him he’s a good boy. The two of them run back up the beach to Remus, who holds his hands up in defense.

Joey just licks his face, taking care not to get his wet paws all over, but Sirius possesses less tact than the german shepherd and kicks sand at Remus, who swears at him while laughing. The sun has set and the world is washed in dark blue. Sirius drops down back onto the tight packed sand, nearly on top of Remus, and pulls him close with an arm around his shoulders. 

“I’m so happy, Moony.”

“Yeah?”

“I feel like things are getting better, you know?” Remus just nods, and Sirius realizes. His voice is more abashed as he continues. “Well, you know. Apart from.”

“Yeah.”

It’s difficult to recover when you are supposed to be worried and hurt. They only start to feel better when the world around them collapses, again and again.

“You’re allowed to be happy, Sirius. And I’m happy for you, with you.” Remus holds Sirius’s other hand in his, and squeezes it tight. “And I’m glad you figured out the- well- you know. The sex stuff.”

“I think it was the yoga.” Remus laughs, Sirius doesn’t. “No, honestly! Sandra says that it reinstates a sense of safety within your body, not just your mind.” Sanda is Sirius’s therapist, or ‘mind healer’ as he calls her, and he often quotes her in a posh little accent that is not too far off from his own. “And I think it’s true, anyways. I feel safe with you.” 

“I love you.”

Sirius kisses him as a response. Then cards his fingers through his wavy hair and settles warm and familiar against Remus. They watch the waves push and pull against each other under the light of a waxing moon. Diamonds of light glimmer on the dark blue waves; crystals in a chandelier clinking and shifting during an earthquake.

Remus is a brother of the moon and the child of people a little more human. The tide rolls in, and the tide rolls out again. Sirius has always wanted to live by the sea and now Remus understands why. Remus can breathe in time with it. And the horizon stretches on forever, there is something on the other side, there is  _ something _ ; some faint hope beyond the stars or the blurry purple that fades out into…. nothing.

The waves wash love onto the shore, gentle and tender tonight. The sea rages sometimes and Remus can understand it too. There is understanding in this huge dark thing laid out in front of him, in front of them. So vast, so huge. Tremendous and unafraid.

Remus lets out a long breath and moves closer into Sirius, as though they even could. Their right and left legs overlap as though they couldn’t get any closer, any nearer to each other. Like maybe they could sit by the sea with Joey Ramone curled up on the sand next to them, and they have found their way home. 


	12. Forever and Forever

_ Remus Lupin  _

_ 24 Sunny Corner Lane _

_ Penzance, County Cornwall _

_ June 30th, 1995 _

_ Mary MacDonald _

_ 220 Pelham Street _

_ Port of Spain, Trinidad _

  
  


_ Dear Mary, _

_ I had a meeting with Dumbledore yesterday and a lot of things have come to light that I haven’t even stopped to consider before. Most of it starts with the prophecy, which I’ve been going over in my head for days. Dumbledore thinks that Voldemort has made himself immortal through the use of Horcruxes, all of which need to be destroyed in order to kill Voldemort at last.  _

_ He tried to kill Harry as a baby and only lived through the backfiring of the Killing Curse because he’s split his soul. As of now, he’s unkillable. But according to the prophecy, either Harry or Voldemort has to die. To complete the prophecy. If you even believe in that sort of thing. I never thought I did, but this is changing my mind. _

_ In short, I need your help. I’m not going to let Harry die, and he’ll only be the last. The Death Eaters are killing again and it’s starting to feel like last time all over again. I wouldn’t be asking this of you if I weren’t desperate, but you are the smartest Curse Breaker I know. I understand if you aren’t willing to help. Just know that I will be working on this until it’s me who dies. I’m not letting him get away with this again. We deserve a life past this, all of us. Especially those of us who fought the first time. _

_ At least give it some thought. Thank you for everything, from forever.  _

_ Remus _

They go about a grand total of twenty four hours without discussing the inevitable: Remus’s meeting with Dumbledore. Sirius hadn’t talked about it simply because he loves avoiding these types of things and Remus had taken him up on a day and nighttime of pretending nothing is wrong, but everything is wrong in Harry’s world and they can’t ignore his struggles, especially not at a time like this.

It’s like, Harry has nightmares every night and Remus is a light sleeper so hears him screaming in the night. The first time, Remus had jolted awake in shock; screams hoarse down the hallway. In the dark bedroom, he could make out the silhouette of Joey’s head at the end of the bed, and his big ears pricked in alarm. Remus lay in the warm shadows of the bedroom and the screaming stopped. Joey jumped off the bed to go investigate. Remus fell back asleep.

Except Harry doesn’t fall back asleep.

When Remus gets ready for work early in the morning and peers outside to get a gauge on the weather, Harry is sitting in one of the beach chairs that everyone in this household reserves for having private little breakdowns in, as though it isn’t half past six in the morning and the sunrise is still steadily building on the horizon. Still colorless for now.

Remus goes out to talk to him before he has to leave, and Harry is quietly dismissive, almost boldly so, for how awful he sounded last night.

“Are you doing anything today?” Remus asks, to which Harry just shrugs. He’s been looking out at the sea for the entire conversation and seems to have trouble maintaining eye contact with Remus. 

“What is there to do?” It’s a fair question.

“Well… I got a job, when I was your age. It’s rewarding, I guess.” At this, Harry turns and stares up at him. Remus feels sort of abashed for no reason at all. It is a fair suggestion, similar to the one that his own father gave to him back in 1973. 

“A job?” Remus nods. 

“I worked at a garden centre.” Harry’s eyes widen. “Well. Just. Give it a think? It feels good to have something to do, and you make friends, anyways, with coworkers, like… and you know what? I have work. So I’m going to go. I’ll see you later-”

“How did you get a job? As a kid?”

“You just ask. I went all about my town, asking literally everyone if they were looking to hire.”

“Huh.”

“It works. Ha, works, get it?” Remus chuckles at his own stupid joke and then realizes that he’s been spending too much time laughing at Sirius’s own awful puns. “Sorry, Harry, anyways. I’ll see you later. Have a good day!” Harry doesn’t reply, just rolls his eyes and turns his head back to regard the sea as though staring at the water all day will solve his problems. He and Sirius could get along in that personal hobby. Wave watching.

-

Remus runs into Kingsley Shacklebolt and not by accident; Remus had been doing some clandestine hanging about in the Auror office throughout the day and had finally seen the tall man emerging from some sort of meeting. Remus had pounced on him, for lack of a better term, and first asked the line of ‘are you busy?’ to which Kingsley had obviously replied ‘no’, judging by how manic and strung out Remus might have looked.

He had sat down with Remus and Remus had pushed the scrawled prophecy across the table to him. Kingsley had read it over and whistled under his breath, pushed it back over to Remus, and asked what he could do to help.

“Horcruxes,” Remus says and Kingsley’s face goes all weird, “I’m assuming you know what they are?” Kingsley nods but he pushes the paper again, as though restating that this piece of parchment and everything tied to it may just be Remus’s problem, and Remus’s alone. 

“This is dark stuff, Remus. I’m not so sure… I don’t know.” Kingsley looks unsure. “This is properly dangerous.” 

“I know, and I totally understand if you need some time to think it over-”

“I will.”

“-but I need your help. I need any help I can get. And I trust you.” Remus looks at him in the eye, holds that contact, and Kingsley nods after a moment. His face is still wary.

“So what do you need from me, specifically?”

“Your help, your time, your knowledge. Your ties with Dumbledore.”

“You can’t talk to him yourself?”

“I have, I did. That’s why I’ve started researching this. But we… we disagree on some things.” Remus scrubs at his face and sits back in his chair, trying to diffuse some of the tension that he’s unknowingly created. “Dumbledore wants to regroup the Order, to fight against the Death Eaters a second time over, and we’re all going to die again.”

“Remus-”

“We  _ are.  _ You know that it’s a lost cause.” Kingsley quiets. “And so instead of wasting ourselves fighting against the- the footsoldiers, the ones who don’t matter, we need to kill the source of it all. What will they do without their leader?” Kingsley just listens, his face still uncertain. “When Voldemort was gone, for thirteen years, it was almost calm. Almost peace. And now that he’s back, it’s all going to explode. Dumbledore is going to make kids fight, kids like we were. Just like we were. I’m not going to watch it happen again, not when I’ve taught most of them and I see what’s at stake, it’s not- it’s not worth it. Nothing can be worth that kind of pain again.” 

Kingsley sits there for a while, just thinking. He doesn’t look in Remus’s eyes. He sits and thinks and after a while he says,

“I’ll talk to Dumbledore. Not about you, or the new Order. I don’t want to get involved with any of that quite yet. I’ll only talk to him about the Horcruxes.”

“Will you join him? If he asks?” Kingsley looks up at him again.

“No,” He starts. “Not yet. But Remus… we will need to fight back. We can’t just let the Death Eaters carry on, not that we did last time, but the fighting is necessary. Even during the last war, we did make a difference. Even if all our friends died, Remus, we made a difference. If I have to fight against them again, then I will, easy. But I’ll help you too.” He holds out his hand and Remus stares at it for a shocked moment before realizing that he’s supposed to shake it. 

He does, surprised and still so grateful for Kingsley’s kindness, no matter how careful the Auror may be in the current moment. He’s a Hufflepuff after all, and though the years of Houses defining them are long ago, Kingsley is still more generous and charitable than Remus supposes he’s giving him credit for. 

“Do you know who will be a big help to you after all? Who knows about this stuff?” Remus stares at Kingsley blankly, stupid. “Sirius. Try him.” And then Kingsley up and leaves as though assuming that Remus  _ hadn’t  _ asked Sirius, because they  _ live  _ together like a married couple who avoid talking about bad things, things like this. 

Of course Remus hasn’t talked to Sirius about it.

He spends the better part of three hours editing some reports that his coworkers have pushed upon him in hopes of doing something productive, and Remus obliges, but he also details a little script of what he might say to Sirius in case he can catch him to take a ‘lunch break’ otherwise known as a serious conversation break, or an Annoy Sirius Black break.

Sirius is annoyed, anyways. 

He and Remus get coffee from a Muggle cafe down the street and sit outside despite the heat and people and cars. Sirius looks wary. His face is all drawn up, mouth small and pinched, like he’s bitten something sour. He looks like his mother when he’s worried, which is why he worries so infrequently and instead takes the side of blind optimism that most often gets him into trouble. 

Sirius says, “I don’t know.” He plays with the disposable coffee cup. “Jesus, Remus, I don’t know.” Remus hears these words and they do something to his patience levels which are, so you know, nearly empty and now wavering dangerously fucking low, especially today, especially with the full moon in three days and another St. Mungo’s cell looming in his memory:

“I’m going to be honest with you, Sirius, because this is the most important thing right now. There is nothing more important than this. Not Lou Reed, or your motorbike, or Blur’s new record.”

“You mean  _ Oasis-” _

“Sirius!” Remus doesn’t give a shit about the war between Blur and Oasis (he’s team Blur, but that’s neither here nor there), in fact, Remus would give up all of rock n’ roll if it meant that Tom Riddle would just give up and  _ die  _ already _.  _ “Dumbledore told me how we have to kill Voldemort.” 

“Way to ruin the mood-”

“Sirius, would you please-?!” Sirius smiles, now, knowing that he’s annoying Remus to no end. He takes another drink of the coffee and then sits back in his chair, head cocked at a sassy angle, eyebrows raised.  _ Go on,  _ he says wordlessly. All action. God, Remus loves him so much.

But when Remus mentions Horcruxes, Sirius’s face goes slack. All the haughty emotions drain from him in one fell swoop, and he shakes his head emphatically, sitting back in his chair, with an expression like dismay on his face.

“I’m not getting involved, and I’m not letting you get involved, not in that kind of stuff. That just leads to death. That’s not happening.”

“It’s the only way to kill him! It leads to  _ his  _ death!”

“Well-!” Sirius throws both hands up in a gesture that says  _ I don’t care  _ and Remus hates that he won’t understand. 

“ _ Why  _ won’t you get involved? Did you think killing him was going to be some sort of easy task? Did you think it was going to be safe?”

“Of course not, but- just- but.” Sirius stammers, something completely unlike him, and he jams his jaw shut while evidently trying to put the words together in his mind. This is something that has improved considerably for them, their communication. Probably the therapy. Or living together for an extended period of time, getting to know each other again. Sirius takes a deep breath.

“My brother died chasing Horcruxes.” Remus’s eyes widen. He hasn’t heard or thought about Regulus Black in years. After his death in 1979, Sirius never spoke of him again. Not like they talked about him much before, but. Remus had known Regulus at Hogwarts in a strange, brief way. 

He had been a year younger, in Slytherin, and a Quidditch player with lots of friends and a face that looked just like his older brothers’. There had been many instances where Remus had been wandering the halls of Hogwarts, stoned and in the midst of some epic procrastination, seeking out someone to entertain him, when he had passed by Regulus and nearly rushed up to him with a smile, a name on his tongue that did not belong to him, and Regulus had always given him a brief, polite smile, and Remus had seen the judgement in his grey eyes. Sirius’s eyes were always warmer.

In Remus’s sixth year, Regulus had shown up to some of the tutoring sessions that Remus ran alongside a few Ravenclaws. So then Remus had known him as quiet and studious, if you wanted. Regulus had been friendly enough. He hadn’t come back to be tutored, the next year. He got really pale, sort of scary looking, all skin and bones and evil, deep down. Once Sirius had told them that Regulus had to have gotten his Dark Mark by now, Remus hadn’t housed too much respect for the younger boy.

Sirius never spoke of him with anything other than some sort of polite disdain in his voice. And one night in 1979, Regulus had showed up at their flat, all strung out and wild. Sirius had been on a mission and Remus might have been coming down from a psychedelic trip, so he had initially assumed the scrawny little Black in front of him had been a hallucination until Regulus had asked him where Sirius was over and over with a heart wrenching amount of humanity in his voice.

_ Please tell me he’s here, only I have to say goodbye and it’s my last chance, it’s my last chance, where is he? Where is he? Can I find him? _

Not even Remus had known where Sirius was. He tried to pacify Regulus but that had made things even worse and Regulus had stepped back into the hallway. Remus can still remember the rasps of his breath and the inhuman wildness in his eyes. He’d been having a really awful panic attack, the worst one Remus has ever seen anyone else have, and he’d been gasping for breaths like a man drowning.

Apparated away before Remus could get another word out, and no one in the Order had seen him alive ever again. 

“How do you know that?”

“He told me.”

“He did?”

Sirius shrugs. “A lot happened back then.” 

“You still talked to him?”

“Sometimes, yeah.” Sirius shrugs. He looks more troubled than ever. “I gave him our home address, of our flat, just in case… and he wrote to me, sometimes. He told me when our dad died. He was sort of losing it, you know. He regretted it all.” Sirius sighs and pushes his tattooed fingers back through his hair. “Voldemort had hidden something in this cave. A Horcrux, I’m sure. Regulus went after it and then…” Sirius just twists his mouth and the sentence dies. “I don’t want anyone else I love to get hurt.”

“Well,” Remus pushes on with impatient regard for Sirius’s feelings, “Harry’s already been hurt pretty badly, and it’s inevitable that more of that is bound to happen. Your godson is Voldemort’s main target and it’s really, really weak of you to be too afraid to fight because of something that will happen either way.” His words hit and he regrets them immediately. Sirius’s face hardens.

“I know the full moon’s coming up, so I’m going to let that slide, but I’m sorry because I’m afraid. That’s it, Remus. I’m afraid. I don’t know what I’ll do if things turn out like last time. I cannot fight. I’m a fucking  _ wreck,  _ Remus, I haven’t even tried casting… casting any offensive spells-”

“You don’t have to  _ fight- _ ”

“I don’t know what I’ll have to do! I don’t want to do anything! It makes me sick just thinking about it!”

“If you don’t fight then it’s going to be Harry fighting, and Ron and Hermione, and Dumbledore’s going to have a second generation of kids fighting his own battles for him-”

“I  _ know!  _ I know but why do we have to fight two wars, why do we have to…” Sirius trails off again. He glances around at the other people seated at tables around them and hunches in on himself, insecure about the blowup. His face is very white. He looks like he’s going to be sick. 

“You know what, Sirius, just leave it, just forget about it-”

“Come on, Moony, I won’t forget about it, I just need to process it. Okay? Just give me some time. You just have to be patient, please, just  _ try _ to be patient with me.” Both of them know that they’re running out of time quicker than they’d like. But Sirius’s grey eyes are wide and panicked, like he just can’t deal with this at the current moment. 

He cups his chin with his hands and speaks into his palms, “I just can’t talk about it right now or else I’m going to freak out, so just leave it.”

“Okay.” Remus pauses. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.” Sirius stands up, shaky. His face twists when he looks at Remus and then he looks away, and he looks so heartbroken for a moment. Sirius keeps his eyes fixed on the clouds, skimming lazily overhead. “I’m going to go back to work, okay, and pull it together. I’ll talk about it later with you, okay, I promise. I know how important this is.” Sirius sounds like he’s choking out the words, almost. 

Then he looks straight at Remus with those scared eyes. “Could you like… go out after work? Like visit Hagrid, or your dad, or go have a pint with someone from work, or something… I need to think and I want to talk to Harry about it all. About the prophecy and everything, and the Horcruxes. I just think we should keep him in the loop.”

For some reason, Remus feels an odd protective instinct for Harry. It’s what parents must feel, what his own father must have felt in 1978 when Remus was leaving home at eighteen to go fight in a war. Remus doesn’t want Harry to know all there is to know. 

“I don’t know, Sirius, he’s just a kid…”

“He’s almost fifteen!”

“That’s  _ young,  _ Sirius. I mean, when I was fifteen…” Remus trails off, thinking back on the mid-seventies.  _ Jesus.  _ He was up to no good at fifteen, already. 

But he looks at Sirius, biting at his nails, at the only tattoos that are visible in his good work robes. He covers up his arms and legs, long sleeves and trousers. But there are tattoos on his hands, and one on his throat that spreads down to his neck, a little bit. Sirius knows boundaries, knows when to stop, especially when talking about the gory horrors of fighting the Death Eaters, of what’s going to happen.

Because Harry already knows the torture, and not even Sirius felt that until he was older.

“Okay,” Remus says, finally letting go of the argument. “Okay. I’ll see you tonight, yeah?”

“Yeah, okay.” Sirius takes a few steps away, timid and insecure under the glares of some Muggles around them. “See you tonight.” 

Remus doesn’t have anyone that he wants to hang out with after work. He’s already annoyed Kingsley enough today, and he doesn’t want to show up at Hagrid’s without an invitation. And he’s not in the mood to talk to his dad. They always just end up arguing about something. Remus walks over the Waterloo Bridge as the sun sets. Early summer in London, and it hasn’t rained today. 

Remus had brought his old Walkman with him. He always used to work with music playing and now sometimes brings a few tapes with him and listens to them with his headphones on in the office. Tonight, he puts on a New Order tape and listens as ‘Age of Consent’ plays through the start of his walk. He stays out late. Gets some food at a tiny little shop with no space to eat inside so he eats it on a bench by a park, and then keeps walking. Wanders for hours.

Ordinarily, he would have just stayed at work and finished polishing the reports but his heart just isn’t in it. He feels trapped in his tiny office with the cramped desk and lack of windows. He fucking hates his job. So Remus walks, sits at benches, changes out the four tapes that had been in his case- two New Order, one Joy Division, and one from Radiohead. He smokes one daily allotted cigarette and feeds some of his sandwich scraps to some pigeons. 

When the sky goes totally black, Remus returns home.

Sirius is chatting loudly on the telephone with a glass of wine in one hand, and the other one busy petting Joey. Sprawled out on the couch and gossiping loudly. He smiles when he sees Remus, though, his blue eyes crinkling at the edges. 

“Abby,” He mouths at Remus, shifting the phone that’s held in the crook of his shoulder, “From work.” Remus nods knowingly and smiles at Joey who Sirius holds back to pet. He takes off his shoes, leaves his bag by the door, and goes to see if Harry’s home. He’s not. No note, or anything. Sirius probably talked to him already.

So Remus lays in bed and reads, listening to Sirius chat loudly with his friends from work through the wall. He can’t read with music, though, and gives up on his book in favor of listening to early Clash music, Sirius’s favorite. But Sirius stays up talking for a while. Remus is half asleep in bed, after Harry comes home from wherever he’s gone, by the time Sirius finally comes to bed. 

Sirius doesn’t speak to Remus and creeps around in the dark like he thinks Remus is asleep. But after he comes into bed and lies down with his back to Remus, he’s still tense, listening. 

After a while, Sirius quietly half whispers, “Hey, Moony.”

“Hey Pads.” Remus responds right away, even though he’d been half asleep and at the lovely point just before dropping off where there’s nothing in his mind at all. Sirius has always had trouble getting the thoughts out of his head; perpetually lying awake at night and worrying about things. During the war, he had worried all night long. 

Sirius had been a substance-fiend back in the day. On the days that he hadn’t been assigned missions, he would ingest so many uppers, downers, and drugs of some sort all around that Remus had been justifiably worried about his boyfriend dying of a premature heart attack or caffeine overdose. 

Sirius would start his mornings off with shot after shot of espresso (followed that evening by shot after shot of liquor), and then treated himself to a bowl or maybe five or weed throughout the afternoon, and then the drinking set in around sunset. The caffeine had set him into an idea frenzy, where he would pace about the apartment with sweaty palms and bright eyes, eager and alert. 

The weed had made him think a lot. Maybe too much. The alcohol always put a spin on those thoughts, be it good or bad, and by the time Remus would curl up in bed, eager for some time away from his neurotic boyfriend, Sirius would have so many huge ideas about the world around them that he would toss and turn until Remus found an indirect way to kick him out of bed, and then he would just pace around the apartment. 

Which was even worse for Remus, because then he wondered what Sirius was doing. 

Mostly he would smoke a lot of weed. On the bad nights, he would drink a lot of vodka. Other times he made himself throw up, and Remus would hear him retching in the bathroom. Sometimes the vodka made him puke. Sirius would start off his mornings around four or five on the bathroom floor, his hair all sweaty, curled up next to the toilet so he could puke with the ease of convenience.

On the worst nights, Sirius would leave the apartment. Quietly, pressing the door shut so Remus wouldn’t hear him go, but Remus always knew. And then Sirius was no longer within Remus’s reach, where he knew he was  _ there _ , at least, where Remus was able to help him if it ever came down to it. 

When Sirius left, usually to ride his motorbike through the streets or sky, Remus would stay up all night too. Sirius always inevitably came back. He’d usually hit some adrenaline high from riding the bike at law breaking speeds, take it around the streets to cool himself down, get something to eat and return in the early hours of the morning feeling more normal than usual. With a full stomach and a clear head, he would finally fall asleep just as the day began. 

And one night in 1981, Sirius took his bike for a ride and he never came back. 

So tonight, thirteen years later, when Sirius asks for Remus at whatever god awful hour in the morning, Remus is there for him. 

“I’ll help you with the stupid Horcruxes.” Remus exhales in relief.

“Thank you,” He says, burying his face in that space where Sirius’s neck meets his shoulder, where his thick black hair falls and smells like shampoo, leather, cigarettes. “Thank you.”

“Always.”

“It’s going to be a lot. It’s going to be hard. But worth it beyond anything. Anything. If it works.”

“It’ll work if I’m helping, right?” Sirius laughs a little bit. “And anyways, I’m here forever, Moony. I’ll always help.” Sirius tells him softly. “Forever.” Remus feels Sirius there, that heartbeat just under his skin. His hair tickling Remus’s neck, or his warm breath. He’s here. 


	13. St. Jude

_ Mary MacDonald _

_ 220 Pelham Street _

_ Port of Spain, Trinidad _

_ July 7th, 1995 _

_ Sirius Black _

_ 24 Sunny Corner Lane _

_ Penzance, County Cornwall _

_ Dear Sirius, _

_ I recently received a letter from Remus that suggests he might not be batting on a full wicket. Apparently he’s trying to kill Voldemort and needs my help as a Cursebreaker? Just writing to you for confirmation, I guess, because I don’t really know what to tell Remus. I have a family here and I won’t be headed back to England to fight Voldemort for a second time just because Remus says so.  _

_ Though I do trust him. I always have. What do you think I should do? I don’t even know what he needs from me. I want to make it clear to you and him (since he’ll probably end up reading this, knowing you two) that I am willing to help, and I am willing to fight, if it comes down to it. _

_ I heard about the Diggory boy. I know that it could have been Harry. Sometimes I forget that I was essentially his godmother and I do feel like I haven’t done anything near enough to support him. I haven’t even seen him since 1981. Let me know what you think, Sirius. I trust you more than anyone else over there.  _

_ With love, _

_ Mary _

Over the course of the summer of 1995, Sirius Black seems to find himself again.

It’s not as though he hadn’t been acting normal earlier. He had been, at least sort of. The humor was there because he’s always had it, makes jokes out of everything, tries to lighten every mood. Sirius brings a good mood with him. And the wild sense of adventure hasn’t abandoned him, thank god, because Remus’s reckless abandon from the late seventies had been on its last legs until Sirius had turned up again, thank god thank  _ god. _

After the full moon in June, Sirius had produced a bunch of oddly specific questions about the Werewolf Registry that Remus had become defensive about for no good reason.

“So what if you tell them that you’ve got an Animagus buddy who keeps you safe during the moon?”

“They don’t care.”

“What about that essay you published after Hogwarts about, er- about… about werewolves?” Of course Sirius didn’t even know what the essay had been about. It had been too academic for his liking and after reading the introduction, he had essentially given up on it. Remus explained the gist of it to him, and that had been that.

“About treatment?”

“Yeah, like, what about Wolfsbane?”

“I dunno what the Ministry thinks about it, but I can’t afford it anyways.” Sirius looked thoughtful. They had been in the living room, doing adult things like reading the newspaper or touching up their tattoos. The buzz of Sirius’s hastily assembled magical tattoo gun closely resembles the one that he’d first put together in the beginning of their seventh year at Hogwarts. The additions made to it had been dramatic and plentiful, and by 1981, it had been the best version of a professional tattoo machine that Sirius could muster.

The ones on his hands fade fastest, which is why he was touching them up tonight.

There’s protection runes on the backs of his hands and energy rings round his wrists. Each knuckle has a moon, sun, or form of twinkling star shining in black off of his pale skin. Sirius tilted his head as he examined his right hand, the skin around fresh ink red with irritation. He’s grown to be ambidextrous just by practice of tattooing himself. 

“How’d you get it at Hogwarts, then?”

“Snape made it for me.” Remus realized that he’d just been staring at Sirius for the past five minutes, at least, and shook the newspaper back into form as he squinted down at it. 

“Bleeding git…” Sirius mumbled as he buzzed out a clean line on top of old, grey ones. He’d left the conversation alone after that, and two weeks later, a package had arrived addressed to him with FRAGILE and DANGEROUS written all over the box. Harry is the one who brings it in while Remus hovers about the stove while cooking dinner, making sure that his sauce doesn’t burn.

“This… came.” Harry sets the box down on the counter. There’s a strange hissing noise coming from inside. “Addressed to Sirius. Do you think it’ll kill us?” He props himself up to sit on the counter even though Remus has told him not to about a million times, and holds the box up by his head.

“Does that say- dangerous? Maybe put it down.” Remus instructs. Harry just listens to the box and shrugs, putting it back down on the counter for about a second before he picks it up again.

“Can’t we just open it? What’s Sirius’s is yours, right? That’s how marriage works?”

“Not married.” Remus abandons the sauce for a moment to take the box from Harry, who just watches him with unabashed curiosity. The box is  _ warm.  _ And it definitely is hissing. Remus makes eye contact with Harry, who gives him this evil little smile. 

In a clandestine voice, he says, “ _ I  _ think we should open it. I want to know what’s so dangerous.” Remus, too, wants to know what’s so dangerous. “I can just take a peek, tell you what’s inside, and then we can package it back up and pretend we never saw in the first place. Sirius’ll never know! And besides, if he wasn’t so irresponsible with his schedule, he would be here to open it himself.”

Harry is making some valid points indeed. Sirius is off fixing some rogue hexed tractor out by Norwich and won’t be home until later. Remus wanders back over to his sauce, gives it a taste, and declares it fit to eat. He mixes it in with the tofu and cooks it in oil on the stove while Harry starts opening up the package. Remus pretends to be busy not crying as he dices up the rest of the onions while Harry removes an odd sphere from inside the box. Remus glances sidelong at him to see him remove a note, and a package of leaves.

“Huh, looks like potion ingredients. Says… ‘add the aconite leaves and stir five times counterclockwise rapidly, then drink immediately after-”

“Holy shit.” Remus says, forgetting that Harry is still a child and shouldn’t be exposed to this kind of language, “Holy  _ Christ _ , are you serious?”

“What?”

Remus turns the stove down low and rushes across the kitchen to pick up the sphere, peering at the liquid inside. Then he picks up the package of leaves, clocks them as aconite, and then looks at the handwritten instructions. Wolfsbane is never mentioned. Nothing but some potions instructions are mentioned. But it’s the Wolfsbane potion, Remus could recognize it anywhere. He just stares at it for a moment. Harry stares at him.

“ _ What,  _ Remus?”

“It’s Wolfsbane.”

“Your potion? For the moons?” Harry takes the sphere back from Remus. “I thought you said it was really complicated. And expensive. And hard to get-”

“Yeah, it is.” Harry moves closer and together they examine the liquid sloshing about in the orb. Remus knows how to make it and understands that there’s enough in here for one week. The week before the full moon. Harry looks from the sphere to Remus and from Remus to the sphere, and then he holds a hand up expectantly, and Remus looks at it. 

“What?”

“High  _ five,  _ Remus, Jesus! An act of celebration?”

“Oh!” Remus slaps Harry five and returns the boy’s smile with his own sort of hesitant one that turns into a grin and then he just shakes his head. “I can’t believe him- he’s just- this is just. This is  _ mad _ .”

Harry only shrugs. Maybe it’s a given fact now that Sirius Black is a personal sort of superhero who does anything that he sets his mind to; anything for the people he loves. After all, he did break out of the highest security wizarding prison in the entire world just because of one lousy rat. 

**-**

Sirius comes home late and he smells like  _ home.  _ Like cowshit and heady countryside. Remus had been lying on the sofa with Joey turning his feet numb, reading the same page out of his book over and over, and Sirius had come home kicking off muddy boots and muttering about fucking farmes in fucking Yorkshire and Remus had leapt to his feet and swept Sirius up in maybe the biggest hug that Remus has ever given.

“Hey, hey!” Sirius laughs over Remus’s shoulder. “Oh, good to see you too!” Remus takes a deep breath of him and that’s him, his Sirius. Old leather, cigarettes, spicy scent characteristic of some old type of aftershave, and the places that he’s been, the countryside. 

Remus pulls back and cups Sirius’s stubbled face in both hands; Sirius is smiling but his eyes are crinkled in adorable confusion. 

“You got me Wolfsbane!” Sirius’s face goes even weirder.

“That was supposed to be a surprise! You opened my mail?” And then, at the indignant look on Remus’s face, he turns on the charm. “Well, of  _ course  _ I got you Wolfsbane. What kind of husband would I be if I  _ didn’t  _ get you Wolfsbane?” 

“This is why Harry thinks we’re married…” Remus trails off and looks at Sirius’s wide blue eyes and his dark, thick lashes. The bridge of his nose and the smile lines around his eyes and on his cheeks. The curve of his lips. Every feature that Remus has memorized since they met in 1971. There are moments like these when a great  _ what if  _ stretches between them, a future brimming with gold and so much love to go around. Something that burns so bright but you can’t look away, just can’t. There’s so much good that it’s everything all at once.

Like for a moment, everything is just how it should be. And if they die, at least they’ll die together and if this life is a short one, at least they will have had each other. Two strangers brought together by improbable fate, ships in the night, lighthouses.

Sharing the same space for a minute or two.

“It just means everything,” Remus says hoarsely. “ _ Thank  _ you.” His throat is tight with tears. He had cried earlier, after eating dinner with Harry. Remus had smoked his daily cigarette out in the back garden, sitting at the wrought iron table. They had been happy tears, but he had been overcome by emotion all the same. Sirius has always done everything in his power to help Remus. 

Broke the law into smithereens at the spry young age of fifteen by becoming an unregistered Animagus as though it hadn’t taken nearly two years to get the magic down right. And now, paid  _ how  _ much money for a potion that had saved Remus’s life during his one good year in all this madness, his year teaching at Hogwarts? 

This changes everything. Everything.

“All in a day’s work, Moony.” Sirius touches Remus’s face, holds it in his calloused hand. His thumb brushes over the scar on Remus’s jaw and his eyes go soft. There is something clear and sober in his blue eyes that make Remus feel like Sirius can see right inside, can look through everything; he’s seen every ugly awful thing inside and has tasted the selfishness, wrapped himself in the throes of Remus Lupin’s self pity and past all of it he just doesn’t  _ care.  _

Having sex is harder when there’s a child in the house so they decide to mess about in the shower just for the sake of it. Tracing scars and tattoos with their hands and tongues, like they’re just getting to know each other, and at the same time like they’ve known each other for years. And when they’ve both finished they just stand under the water and catch their breaths, more like breath, more like something shared and collective. 

Remus sees Sirius’s tattooed chest rise and fall, and the shadows of his ribs under his skin, the blackwork on his belly, the pieces on his thighs…

“Have you gotten more… more tattoos? Do you ever tell me? Do you do them at night?  _ That _ wasn’t there before.” Remus swipes his hand over the piece on Sirius’s left thigh- an unfinished traditional lighthouse. The other leg has a faded tattoo of a stag. James and Sirius had done matching tattoos back in 1978, but Sirius’s big black dog had faded into the brown skin of James’s arm, much to his dismay.

Remus had been for the most part left alone in regards to Sirius’s home done tattoos save for that dog on his arm. They had been drunk and it had been 1979, which is before things went bad. Remus still can’t think about early 1980. It had probably been the most traumatic part of the war for him and he had not told a single soul about what really happened when he was with Greyback’s pack, and he doesn’t think he ever will.

That’s beside the point. Him and Sirius had been gushy and stupid, carrying on about how much they loved each other and Remus said, “Give me a tattoo, Pads, to, uh… to con- to- haha- to commiserate-?”

“...consummate…”

“Consummate! Yeah! To consummate the marriage?”

“Are we getting married?” Remus had laughed so hard that his stomach ached and Sirius whipped out his gun to give Remus a tattoo that matched one of his own- a simple moon on his wrist that waxed and waned with the phases. A permanent reminder of a short, sweet relationship. (Up until then). 

Sirius steps out of the shower and dries himself off. “Yeah, I’ve, I dunno, I go for sessions sometimes. I found this artist in Manchester and I go up there sometimes.”

“Why don’t you ever tell me?”

“I dunno, it’s a fun surprise, huh? You’ve literally never noticed that I get more?”

“Well, you came back from- with so many more, and then you got more after, and I never knew which were new and which were from.”

“Azkaban,” Sirius says. His tone is sort of sharp. “You can say it out loud, you know. It’s not a dirty word.”

“Right.” Remus watches Sirius dress and for a moment is sort of entranced, the way he often is when looking at him, and then snaps back to the real world and puts his own clothes back on. “How did you even do them there?” 

“A shiv and soot for ink.” Remus laughs. Sirius looks up at him and for once, he’s not smiling. “Dead on, Moony.”

“That’s really badass, Sirius, what the fuck.” Sirius opens the bathroom door and pads down the hall while Remus follows behind him. “You were  _ that  _ dedicated?”

“I had nothing else to do!”

“Didn’t they get infected?”

“Well, they’re not anymore! I’m a slave to my art, Remus, and look how it’s paid off. I’ve actually been talking with my friend in Manchester and he says I could maybe do an apprenticeship, if I’m that dedicated. I’m putting together a portfolio.”

“Can I see it?”

“Absolutely not.” Sirius flops down on the bed and Remus lets Joey slink in after them before toeing the door shut. “Not until it’s perfect.” Sirius has always been one to show off, looking for pride in the smallest things, and Remus has never known him as a perfectionist. Maybe he’s just never had anything to take true pride in. And when Remus thinks back on it, Sirius  _ had _ often been secretive about his motorbike and had never taken Remus to ride on it until the ‘flying bit’ had been completely safety checked with loads of help from James. 

“I won’t judge.” Sirius just laughs. “Like I can be the judge of tattoo art? What do I know about tattoos?” Another non-reply, just Sirius pulling on shorts to sleep in and then falling into bed, burying under the covers, tired of focused conversation and just ready for sleep after a long day. Remus follows behind.

**-**

“Oh, Jesus Christ.” Remus startles awake in the darkness with his hands pressed to his face, automatically listening. There’s one-sided shouting down the hallway, muffled by doors and walls, but shouting all the same. Harry. Sirius is fast asleep. He’s a blanket hog and looks quite cozy all wrapped in the blankets while Remus gets most of one to himself, but he’s constantly kept up by Harry’s nightmares, and so is Joey. 

Joey is lying at the end of the bed, keeping Sirius’s feet warm, but Remus can see his ears perked up in the darkness. Listening. Remus slides out of bed and hesitates in the doorway. Joey had followed and stands at Remus’s side as though to protect him from these noises in the night. Remus looks down at the dog who stares right back up at him with round, soulful eyes.

“It’s okay,” Remus whispers, “It’s only Harry. You go back to sleep.” Joey hesitates as Remus pushes open the door and moves quietly down the hallway; it had been quiet for a brief period and now the mumbled shouts start up again, Harry’s words jumbled and strange, then coming together: “Don’t kill Cedric,  _ no,  _ don’t kill him- don’t kill him- please, PLEASE,  _ NO _ !” Harry bridges some gap between sleep and waking and Remus can hear him gasp in realization, he gently pushes open the door, and then Harry screams: “Expelliarmus! Jesus fucking _ Christ _ , Remus, what are you doing?!”

Remus hadn’t had his wand on him, but Harry’s is aimed dead at him. His hand is shaking. Remus raises both hands as a sort of surrender.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry! It’s just me, I didn’t know if you were okay.”

“I’m, I was. A nightmare...” Harry lowers his wand and instead seems to hunch in over himself, pressing his hand to his forehead and whispering  _ oh my god  _ under his breath, as though in pain. “You just scared me.” 

“I’m sorry.” Remus pauses. “Are you okay?”

“It’s my scar…” Harry takes a deep breath and exhales before replying. “It just really hurts. I have nightmares and it hurts like fucking nothing else. Sorry, shit,  _ sorry _ .”

“You can curse, Harry, it’s fine. Do you want to talk about it?”

Harry wants another joint, because Remus is a shitty parental figure when left to his own devices and the poor kid is conditioned to think that talks with Remus involve some kind of exciting reward, like drugs or a present to cheer him up. So Remus makes him hot chocolate and pulls out all the stops with marshmallows too, because it’s that kind of night.

They sit out at the now-iconic wrought iron table that overlooks the ocean. It crashes in the distance like a midnight symphony of the darkest blue you’ve ever seen, and Harry tells Remus that he hasn’t been able to sleep in ages, and don’t even think about Dreamless Sleep Draught.

“Why not?”

“Have you ever taken it?” Harry’s response is quick and defensive. In the distant yellow light from the back door, his eyes look dark and afraid. Remus had taken the draught before, many times, and knows exactly why Harry doesn’t want it. Something about the complete lack of awareness that hits you, not knowing up from down, and the odd visions and the bubbles floating round the corners of your eyes.

“That’s what I thought,” Harry tells him smugly and continues to sip his chocolate. “So, basically, I don’t know what to do.” Remus sighs. This is his queue to jump in and explain that he  _ does  _ know what to do as Responsible Adult #2, and by the way Harry’s eyeing him, he knows it too.

So Remus asks, “What did Sirius talk to you about?” Harry eyes him suspiciously.

“The Prophecy.”

“But not the… not how we’re planning on fixing things?”

“You have a plan? You’re going to fix things?” Harry straightens up. “That’s good to hear.”

“It’s not concrete. I’ll need a lot of help. But yeah. It’s a plan.” Harry raises his eyebrows and jesus, he looks so much like his dad but he acts just like Lily; sometimes he’ll say something or do something, just like raising his eyebrows or rolling his eyes or swearing too much or forgetting his place- something a little reckless, something to laugh off and Remus is reminded infinitely of his mother.

There’s more of her in Harry than his rare green eyes. There’s a spirit from forever ago that Remus doubts will ever truly leave her son.

Remus tells Harry everything because he deserves to hear it. Sirius is right, it doesn’t matter that Harry is only fifteen. The shaky good in the world around him is crumbling and Harry is the epicenter, so yeah, maybe he does deserve to know.

But Horcruxes are a lot to handle, and Harry has questions.

“Splitting your  _ soul?  _ How’s that?” 

“It’s just some awful, really terrible Dark Magic, Harry, not even I know what happens.” Harry is still staring at him eagerly but Remus only shrugs. There’s very little information about Horcruxes out there. The little Remus does know is gruesome. 

“Give me a little more.”

“Harry!” The boy laughs, actually  _ laughs,  _ and smiles at Remus.

“I’m curious!”

“It’s not exactly funny. Horcruxes are first made through murder, through purposeful murder that’s so malicious that it just rips away a part of your soul. And then you have to do something to the body.” Harry’s not laughing anymore.

“Do what?” Details get foggy here. There’s theories, of course, but no one knows for sure. Mostly because no one has  _ made  _ them before. Ideas about eating organs, drinking blood, cutting off body parts, or even necrophilia.

“I don’t know. Mutilating the corpse, or something, but I don’t know. It’s terrible. It’s really awful. Which is why we need to find the Horcruxes and destroy them.”

“It’s the only way to kill him?” There’s a bit of desperation in Harry’s voice. Remus knows how he feels. It sounds like a huge feat to accomplish. Impossible. 

“I think so. I think it’s the only way.” 


	14. Old Friends

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey everyone! sorry for not posting for ages, writing this was like pulling teeth. i didn't like the direction this was going BUT today i had a revelation and changed everything and it's going to be amazing. inspiration has been recovered. never fear!  
> thank u to everyone leaving feedback as it really keeps me going 💕

_ REQUEST FOR INTERNATIONAL PORTKEY - Magical Parliament of Trinidad and Tobago _

NAME OF TRAVELER: Mary MacDonald

LOCATION OF DEPARTURE: Port of Spain, Trinidad

LOCATION OF ARRIVAL: Penzance, United Kingdom 

REQUESTED TIME AND DATE: September 5th, 1995 - 15:00

  
  


“Hey.”

“Hi, good morning.”

“Don’t you have work?” Remus looks up at Harry with a frown on his face. It’s a casual question that feels sort of like an accusation, because Remus is maybe a few missed days off from getting fired because he’s diving deep into this Horcrux thing since apparently no one else cares about it save for Kingsley Shacklebolt’s good conscience and Sirius, when he feels like it.

“I have the day off, because of the moon.”

“Oh.” Harry joins Remus at the breakfast table with a bowl of cereal that crunches loudly as Harry eats. Remus looks down at the letters in front of him, addressed to a collection of people that he doesn’t want to bother but is going to regardless. Kingsley, Mary again, Hestia, Tonks, and one to Arthur Weasley, just in case.

There’s another ‘just in case’ one for Moody, too, but Remus isn’t sure if he’s brave enough to send it.

“So are you still going to the Ministry tomorrow?” Harry asks with his mouth full. Remus nods as he copies down another letter. “Will you take the Wolfsbane there?”

“Yeah, I told them I had it.”

“They don’t care if it works? How  _ does _ it work?”

“It just makes me… it lets me keep my mind, so to say. I don’t go running around attacking people. I usually just sleep through the night, honestly.”

“Huh. That’s cool.” Trust a kid to think of it as  _ cool.  _ Harry pokes at his cereal and takes a glance at the letters that Remus is rewriting based off of a sort of script that he’d created based out of anxiety. “What’re you writing?”

“Just stuff. How’s the job hunt going?”

“It’s not.” Harry clears his throat, almost purposefully. Remus glances back up at him again. “It’s not.”

“Ah.” Harry scrapes his bowl with the spoon, a very purposeful sound, and then he laughs. The mere sound of it is apologetic. “Are you indirectly begging me for pocket money?”

“Please,” Harry says, still sort of laughing, and Remus sighs before forking some over. Harry smiles at him and when he says thank you, he means it. Remus tells him to use it responsibly and Harry just cackles. He tells Remus that he’s going to Ron’s and walks down the hall to his bedroom. He reappears an hour later in everyday clothes and Remus jumps, having thought that he’d already left, and Harry gives him a wave before ducking into the fireplace and tucking his elbows in tight before he Floos away.

Another hour later, there’s a loud knock at the door. Remus wonders if Harry will be on the other side with a Muggle policeman and the threat of a permanent record hanging in the air. But no. He opens the door on Mary MacDonald, looking tired and travel worn.

“Hiya,” She says in her Caribbean tinged accent, having lost that London in her voice. She speaks to you now and you have no idea where she’s from. Totally lost the pride of her youth. “You needed my help.” Remus hugs her and she hugs him back, warm and safe like last year in Trinidad, like February, or maybe twenty or so years ago when they spent hours and hours together all day long, in class or at meals or smoking spliffs out the window of the common room late at night.

Remus says thank you over and over again and Mary waves him away like cross Atlantic travel is nothing much. She takes a nap and in the evening, when Harry comes back home, it’s awkward. Because Harry is back with grass stains on his trousers and his glasses wound with spellotape, frowning at the stranger sitting in the living room and poring over Remus’s letters and notes with him.

“Harry, this is my old friend Mary,” Remus says. “I’ve talked about her, you know. She was good friends with your parents and everyone else back at Hogwarts.”

“Hi.” Harry smiles. “You live in Trinidad, right?”

“Yeah. Wow, you look just-”

“-like my dad. With my mum’s eyes. You were her friend?”

“Lily’s?” Harry nods and joins them at the table with keen interest in his eyes. “Oh, yes. I was her maid of honor!” Harry’s eyes widen. 

“Really?” And of course, they descend into conversation about Lily and James’s wedding, and Mary sharing all of her personal anecdotes while Harry listens hungrily in that sad way he does, desperate for something to characterize the parents he’d truly never met, who had left him before they even met him.

They ask for photos. Remus finds his old albums, once again collecting dust, and presents them to Mary and Harry, who already seem to get along splendidly. Remus sits and watches them pore over photos. Harry asks questions and Mary answers them, all of it going swimmingly until Harry asks: “Is that  _ Wormtail? _ ” with such shock in his voice that Remus startles. 

Mary glances at him, and then Harry looks at him, and Remus doesn’t know what to tell them. It’s not like he sat down and spent hours carefully cutting Peter out of his photographs. As some form of help, Remus mentally characterized the Peter of Hogwarts and the Peter of the war, and the years in between, and today, as completely different people.

“He was our friend,” Remus says weakly.

“Yeah, he was.” Mary agrees. 

“But he. He’s a murderer. He killed Cedric.” Harry looks distraught. “And he’s in your photo albums?” 

Mary says, “He doesn’t have to be.” But Remus doesn’t want Mary explaining how they  _ can  _ carefully cut Peter out of every photograph, because those are Remus’s photos and his memories and he has a headache, and his whole body hurts, and he doesn’t want to take the Wolfsbane tonight, doesn’t know where his Sirius is and wishes they never opened these albums in the first place. Nothing good ever comes from it.

“He was a different person back then. Nobody knew that he had betrayed us, not even at the end.” Mary fingers a page in the book and Harry just looks frustrated. “Harry, it’s getting late.” Harry takes the hint except he’s angry, and slams his bedroom door behind him. Mary gets going soon after, telling Remus that she’d like to see them again whenever possible, and wishes him good luck on the full moon in that powerless way that his friends were always so good at.

When Sirius comes home, it’s very late. He tiptoes into the bedroom so as not to wake Remus up, but Remus is awake because his whole body feels like it’s about to fall apart right here and now, limbs just detaching from his body and everything collapsing. He props himself up on his elbows, watching Sirius move in the darkness, jumping out of his work trousers, his movements sort of jerky and weird.

“Sirius.”

He falls into the dresser, banging his elbow, and cursing in whispers as he falls to the floor. “What the fuck, Moony, I didn’t know you were awake!”

“What are you doing?”

“Getting dressed, more like undressed, what the fuck does it look like?” So he’s angry. When Sirius pops back up from the floor, he’s scowling and rubbing his elbow. When he slides into bed, he smells like blood and liquor.

“Where’ve you been?” Remus asks. Tired. Sirius punches up his pillow and says work, I’ve been working, and now I’m going to sleep. Remus asks if he stopped by the pub, too, and Sirius snaps back something about having a fucking social life, people go for drinks after work, it’s normal, and he turns completely on his side and curls into himself.

Remus wonders about that smell of blood.

**-**

Remus doesn’t see Sirius at all the next day and spends the night on the cold floor of a Ministry cell. It doesn’t hurt so badly to wake up as a human, his joints popping back into place, bones unbreaking themselves as they shift back into his achy, breaky human form. Okay. The Wolfsbane works after all. 

After being released, wrists raw from the manacles, Remus takes the lift up to the third floor, Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes. Sirius is part of the Accidental Magic Reversal Squad, so more often than not, he’s out of the office and in the field, doing whatever it is that he does. But often there’s paperwork to do after modifying memories, and reports to complete, so sometimes Remus can catch him on his days in.

He usually just sends Sirius a paper airplane memo and invites him for lunch, or a ‘break’ in the single stalled toilet on the first floor, and they flirt through interdepartmental memos with initials scrawled on the bottom as though they’re still in sixth year rather than thirty something year olds who deserve at least a few good days.

The receptionist squeals out loud when Remus tells her why he’s there and says, “Oh,  _ you’re _ the husband!” and at this point, Remus hasn’t the heart to protest. “Sirius isn’t in today, though.” She frowns at Remus from behind her glittery lensed glasses. “He called out sick.”

Which is just perfect. Really swell. 

Remus goes to work even though they don’t need him today and he’s desperate to be sacked because he hates it so much, just clearing reports and articles to send to the higher ups. He leaves around five, not expecting to find Sirius at home but still feeling let down when he’s not there. Neither is Harry.

Remus eats dinner with only Joey for company. The German Shepherd rests his muzzle on Remus’s knee while he eats, and his slobbery beard soaks through Remus’s trousers.

“I know,” Remus tells him uselessly, “You miss Sirius, and Harry, and having fun.” Joey just looks at him with those big brown eyes. “I must be boring to you, huh? Not nearly as much fun. I’ll take you after dinner.” Joey whines and then licks Remus’s leg. “Or I’ll take you now… do you want to go for a walk? Huh?” This gets Joey excited, and he sits up straight, ears pricked, his head tilting back and forth as Remus talks to him. “Go for a walk? Okay, let’s go!” Remus stands up and Joey barks with excitement. 

It had taken him a while to learn that making noises was okay, here. Barking when Sirius comes home, prancing about the door with a wagging tail, eager to greet his person. Or whining when he’s bored and wants to play. Remus has heard him howling, too, sometimes. At the door right before he comes home or when he Floos in and Joey is somewhere else, disconsolate, waiting for his family.

Remus wonders what happened to Joey before the shelter and before Sirius found him. One of those mysteries he will never know the answer to.

Like why Harry comes home angry. Remus says hello and Harry just glares at him. Stomps down the hall and slams his bedroom door and Remus thinks o _ f course, he’s a teenager, he’s angry at the world _ and then  _ why, why am I the one having to parent him alone? _

Because when Sirius comes home that night, late, again, the smell is stronger than ever. The buzz of blood magic, dark magic. It’s not real blood. It’s that iron shock in the air associated with dark magic. Like a tooth loose in your mouth, like a hot rush of blood all sticky and warm on your gums and your tongue. Stronger than before is the liquor, too. It’s hot and Sirius is just sweating it.

“How’s the moon?” Undressing in the darkness, again. Remus watches him from bed. His hair is too long, no one’s thought to cut it, and it frames his sharp shoulders. 

“Fine.”

“Wolfsbane did the job?”

“Yeah.”

“You’ll have more for next month, too. Every month. Forever.” Sirius drops into bed and moves to Remus, a hand reaching out and Remus lets him. Sirius is warm from the drink, and he smells like tobacco, leftover leather. He curls up close to Remus, head on his chest. So he can hear his heartbeat. Sirius told him that, once. Something humanizing about it, especially when it’s a werewolf’s heartbeat. 

“Mary’s here, you know.”

“I know.” It’s awful, painful. Sirius lying there so close but there’s liquor on his breath and his eyes are closed. Must be thinking about something. Remus wants to ask. Where have you been? What’s going on? Why are you drinking again? Why won’t you tell me anything? I miss you. This isn’t good.

But Sirius might cry if Remus pushes at him. He remembers their conversation at that cafe in London, how Sirius had to steel himself to even think about those bad parts of the war and how in the end, he couldn’t handle it at all.  _ Please just try to be patient with me. I can’t talk about it or else I’m going to freak out.  _

“Hey.” Remus says.

“Hey?” Sirius looks up at Remus, the best he can from this position. 

“I love you.” Sirius smiles. 

“I love you too.”

“You would… you would tell me if something’s wrong, yeah?” Sirius doesn’t reply at first. He turns his head away from Remus but stays there, close to him.

“I’m. I’m close to something. I’ll probably have a Horcrux for you by the end of the week.” Oh, shit. Not at all what Remus was expecting. And this is so typical. Maybe this  _ is  _ what Remus was expecting, partly. “But I don’t wanna talk about it until it’s over, ‘cause it’s awful stuff, Moony, it’s shit. Makes me sad.”

“Sirius…”

“Sorry I’ve been shit, too, telling you fuck all and the drinking, I’m sorry. Fuck. I’m so sorry about that. I’ll stop. Just no one else to talk to.”

“There’s me.” Sirius doesn’t reply to that. “Just tell me you’re safe.”

“I am.”

“And it’ll be over soon.”

“Will be.”

“Okay.” Remus kisses the top of his head. His voice is muffled by Sirius’s hair. “Harry’s angry with me. Mary made me get out the photo albums and Peter is in them and Harry…”

“I would be angry too,” Sirius tells him softly. “If it didn’t make sense. You know. It probably doesn’t. Harry doesn’t know we were friends. Well. He does, now, but… he doesn’t know what it was like.”

Harry doesn’t know that despite everything, Peter  _ was  _ a good friend. He was always there for company. If you were too shy or embarrassed to do something on your own, he’d offer to do it with you. At the beginning of the war, Peter was the one who learned communications duties while Sirius and Remus fucked around in Cardiff, careless and lazy and young. Peter was good. Remus doesn’t know when that facade slipped, maybe 1980, or perhaps before, but none of them knew until they were looking back at the wreck that their lives had become.

James and Lily never knew. They were admirably naive. Maybe it was easier that way.

There is such a distinction between the Peter of the past and the Peter of the present. Remus discounts today’s Peter as a whole new person. Someone that Remus has never met before. A stranger with a silver hand and a cold heart; a killer. 

Remus holds Sirius closer to him, wanting his warmth. Wanting to just feel him. Sirius makes a quiet sighing noise, falling asleep. Remus realizes that he never responded to him. Always gets so caught up in his own thoughts. But Sirius looks content, maybe drunkenly so, but either way he’s happy. It’s how Remus used to defend his drinking in the war, too,  _ if it makes him feel better, if it makes him less stressed, if it helps him sleep,  _ but he doesn’t think about that now.

Just another excuse to get them through the day.

**-**

As a professor, Remus had learned a few things about teenagers. There’s a difference between being one and acting out, and being an adult who has to witness the dramas and traumas of growing up. In general, kids are defensive. Very much so. Apologies don’t come easy. 

When they were younger, Remus and Sirius hardly ever said sorry for all the shit they did to each other and it was fine, because they’d kiss and make up. They apologize all the time, now, the little reparations that say  _ I’m sorry for leaving you all alone while I rotted in prison for twelve years time,  _ or _ I’m so sorry for not getting you out of there because I was too caught up in my self satisfied suicidal bullshit to pull the pieces apart and understand that you were innocent all along. _

_ I’m sorry for not trusting you. _

So Remus understands that Harry is trying to make amends for the sullen, icy silence he’s been sending Remus’s way when he joins him for breakfast again, as though there hadn’t been a week where he just stayed in his room until noon and then left to go see Ron, or Hermione, or Dean, or someone. He always came home past dinnertime and strode right to his room. Sirius has been off on his Horcrux hunting all week, so the only words Remus and Harry exchanged were the necessary ‘goodnights’ that Remus feels are important to say, and even then they felt strained and fake.

This morning, Harry says hi and Remus says good morning, like their quiet and bitter interlude had never happened. The boy sits down to crunch at his cereal while petting a begging Joey with one hand, absentminded, looking sort of thoughtful.

“You know how you and Sirius and your friend Mary sometimes go and visit all your friends’ graves?” Harry asks, like it isn’t nine in the morning on a Thursday. “Does it make you feel any better?”

“Erm…” Remus regards Harry from over the newspaper, who looks right back at him for just a moment before he breaks eye contact and goes back to his cereal. He really doesn’t put enough milk in, it’s so goddamn loud when he eats. “Yeah? It does for me. Some more than others.”

“How do you mean?”

“I mean. Some of our friends, the context.” Remus realizes that he’s having trouble with sentence structure this morning. “The context they died in was really hard, really bad and it sort of sucks to visit them, because they left in such a bad way. But for some, there’s a lot of closure.” That’s not really true. Remus doesn’t know why he’s lying, maybe because he’s thinking about his mum’s grave instead of his friends, because that’s the only cemetery that feels something like safe to him.

Harry is looking at him again. “My mother, actually, died when I was in my fifth year at Hogwarts. And when I visit her grave, sometimes there’s a sort of spirit. And it does make me feel better.”

“A spirit? Like, a ghost?”

“No, not at all. Just a presence. Just her.”

Harry’s quiet for a moment. He says “I’m sorry.” 

“That’s alright.”

“How did she…?”

“It was cancer.”

“Oh. What about. Do you have… what about your dad?”

“Oh, he’s still kicking about.” Harry’s face brightens at this. “He lives in Wales.”

“Does he really?”

“Yeah.” Talking about Lyall makes Remus realize that maybe it’s high time he pays a visit to his father. “He’s a bit bitter, sort of dried up,” Harry laughs, surprised, “But he’s alright. Maybe I can have him over sometime, honestly… he can meet you, if you like, and see Sirius again. Maybe. He’s not the, er. He’s not got much of a filter on him.”

“Did he give you spliffs as a kid?”

“No, Harry, I thought we weren’t going to talk about that ever again.” Remus is smiling, though. “Why are you asking, anyways? About the graves?” Harry’s face loses the smile and he looks away, nervously playing with his spoon. “We can go to see your parents… if you’d like.” 

“I’d like to.” Harry tells him quietly. “I’d really like that. You know. The Dursleys’ told me that they died in a car crash? They said, they told me my father didn’t have a job, that he was a drunk.” Remus stares at him. “And as a kid, I believed it. That they were just reckless, that they didn’t care about me…”

“I’m sorry, Harry. You know that’s not true.”

“I know. I know,  _ now _ . Hagrid tells me I’m a wizard and all of a sudden I’m a hero and my parents- even more so. It’s just strange. Erm. But it’s not only their graves I want to see.” Oh, god. Remus knows what’s coming next but he still almost flinches when Harry asks, “Do you know where Cedric’s buried?” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i swear things get happier in a few chapters.


End file.
